What this means for learners
Tiv and Swahili share 28 sounds — roughly 70% of Swahili's inventory overlaps with Tiv. Shared sounds are ones a speaker already knows from their native language and will generally produce and perceive accurately without explicit training.
The 9 sounds found only in Swahili represent the greatest pronunciation challenge for Tiv 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, Tiv has 12 sounds not used in Swahili. Native Swahili speakers learning Tiv 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.