What this means for learners
Tiwa and Lak share 22 sounds — roughly 32% of Lak's inventory overlaps with Tiwa. Shared sounds are ones a speaker already knows from their native language and will generally produce and perceive accurately without explicit training.
The 47 sounds found only in Lak represent the greatest pronunciation challenge for Tiwa 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, Tiwa has 19 sounds not used in Lak. Native Lak speakers learning Tiwa 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.