What this means for learners
Swedish and Kabiyɛ share 20 sounds — roughly 43% of Kabiyɛ's inventory overlaps with Swedish. Shared sounds are ones a speaker already knows from their native language and will generally produce and perceive accurately without explicit training.
The 27 sounds found only in Kabiyɛ represent the greatest pronunciation challenge for Swedish 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, Swedish has 15 sounds not used in Kabiyɛ. Native Kabiyɛ speakers learning Swedish 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.