Only in Tigre 37
What this means for learners
Tigre and Burushaski share 17 sounds — roughly 29% of Burushaski's inventory overlaps with Tigre. Shared sounds are ones a speaker already knows from their native language and will generally produce and perceive accurately without explicit training.
The 42 sounds found only in Burushaski represent the greatest pronunciation challenge for Tigre 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, Tigre has 37 sounds not used in Burushaski. Native Burushaski speakers learning Tigre 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.