Only in Songhai 33
What this means for learners
Songhai and Dafla share 15 sounds — roughly 31% of Dafla's inventory overlaps with Songhai. Shared sounds are ones a speaker already knows from their native language and will generally produce and perceive accurately without explicit training.
The 12 sounds found only in Dafla represent the greatest pronunciation challenge for Songhai speakers. The adult brain tends to map unfamiliar sounds onto the closest native equivalent — a process that produces the characteristic "accent" of a second-language speaker. Learning to hear and produce these sounds as distinct requires focused ear training, not just repetition.
Conversely, Songhai has 33 sounds not used in Dafla. Native Dafla speakers learning Songhai will face the mirror-image challenge with these sounds.
Phoneme inventories from PHOIBLE. Data reflects one documented inventory per language; some variation exists across dialects and sources.