The article considers the role of phonological sensitivity in the formation of phonetic skills in a foreign language. In psycholinguistic terms, speaking in a nonnative language is a language contact. When learning a language, it is important to make the interaction of contacting languages not spontaneous but considered when modeling speech communication. Since the formation of mechanisms that ensure the speech activity of an individual in the target language occurs under the influence of interference, it is necessary to study the specifics of the contacting language systems when they perceive sounding stimuli in a non-native language. However, it is not possible to make the right decision whether the phoneme composition of words occurs correctly or not under the natural conditions of communication in a foreign language. This requires a special phonetic experiment. The authors describe the results of an experiment aimed at identifying the phonetic sensitivity of Thai speakers. The material of the experiment – 260 syllables that have a CV structure (consonant + vowel). Thai respondents who had not previously studied Russian were to listen to audio recordings of syllable pronunciation and reproduce them. The authors analyzed the reproduction of Russian vowels and consonants in the syllables. The authors managed to identify the similar and different articulation characteristics of sounds of interacting languages. It was detected that when imitating Russian syllables, Thais do not realize the opposition of consonants characterized by “hardness/softness” and “voicing/voicelessness”. Therefore, it is possible to work out recommendations on the special work on the formulation of soft sounds and the development of skills to distinguish voiced and voiceless sounds. The research confirmed the idea that the influence of the native language is clear if it prevails functionally.