What this means for learners
Tamil and Kota share 35 sounds — roughly 81% of Kota's inventory overlaps with Tamil. Shared sounds are ones a speaker already knows from their native language and will generally produce and perceive accurately without explicit training.
The 6 sounds found only in Kota represent the greatest pronunciation challenge for Tamil 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, Tamil has 8 sounds not used in Kota. Native Kota speakers learning Tamil 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.