What this means for learners
WEST MAKIAN and Lahu share 12 sounds — roughly 26% of Lahu's inventory overlaps with WEST MAKIAN. Shared sounds are ones a speaker already knows from their native language and will generally produce and perceive accurately without explicit training.
The 34 sounds found only in Lahu represent the greatest pronunciation challenge for WEST MAKIAN 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, WEST MAKIAN has 11 sounds not used in Lahu. Native Lahu speakers learning WEST MAKIAN 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.