What this means for learners
Turkish and Lao share 24 sounds — roughly 57% of Lao's inventory overlaps with Turkish. Shared sounds are ones a speaker already knows from their native language and will generally produce and perceive accurately without explicit training.
The 18 sounds found only in Lao represent the greatest pronunciation challenge for Turkish 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, Turkish has 16 sounds not used in Lao. Native Lao speakers learning Turkish 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.