What this means for learners
Taz Selkup and Kikamba share 20 sounds — roughly 49% of Kikamba's inventory overlaps with Taz Selkup. Shared sounds are ones a speaker already knows from their native language and will generally produce and perceive accurately without explicit training.
The 11 sounds found only in Kikamba represent the greatest pronunciation challenge for Taz Selkup 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, Taz Selkup has 21 sounds not used in Kikamba. Native Kikamba speakers learning Taz Selkup 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.