Only in Tewa 42
What this means for learners
Tewa and Ket share 15 sounds — roughly 26% of Ket's inventory overlaps with Tewa. Shared sounds are ones a speaker already knows from their native language and will generally produce and perceive accurately without explicit training.
The 17 sounds found only in Ket represent the greatest pronunciation challenge for Tewa 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, Tewa has 42 sounds not used in Ket. Native Ket speakers learning Tewa 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.