What this means for learners
Tunica and Cham share 20 sounds — roughly 57% of Cham's inventory overlaps with Tunica. Shared sounds are ones a speaker already knows from their native language and will generally produce and perceive accurately without explicit training.
The 15 sounds found only in Cham represent the greatest pronunciation challenge for Tunica 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, Tunica has 5 sounds not used in Cham. Native Cham speakers learning Tunica 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.