What this means for learners
Waorani and Bemba share 17 sounds — roughly 53% of Bemba's inventory overlaps with Waorani. Shared sounds are ones a speaker already knows from their native language and will generally produce and perceive accurately without explicit training.
The 8 sounds found only in Bemba represent the greatest pronunciation challenge for Waorani 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, Waorani has 15 sounds not used in Bemba. Native Bemba speakers learning Waorani 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.