Only in Urdu 30
What this means for learners
Urdu and Sindhi share 28 sounds — roughly 44% of Sindhi's inventory overlaps with Urdu. Shared sounds are ones a speaker already knows from their native language and will generally produce and perceive accurately without explicit training.
The 36 sounds found only in Sindhi represent the greatest pronunciation challenge for Urdu 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, Urdu has 30 sounds not used in Sindhi. Native Sindhi speakers learning Urdu 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.