In order to avoid problematic diacritics, some of the consonants are not pronounced as an English speaker might be accustomed to pronouncing them. G is actually the sound that is written ng in English, and H is actually a voiceless velar fricative that is not found in English, but is represented as ch in German.
The five vowels are pronounced as follows: the a is like in "father", the e is like in "cafe", the i is like in "spaghetti", the o is like in "poke", and the u is like in "sue", although all of the vowels tend to be tenser than their English counterparts. Any of these vowels can be either short (represented by a single vowel) or long (represented by a double vowel). Long vowels sound identical to short ones but are held for an extra beat; therefore, in the word "Nlaaki", the a sound is held for longer than the i sound in the second syllable.
Consonants may be combined, but such clusters may only begin syllables, not end them, and only certain kinds are permissible. These include nasal stops plus approximants (m, n, and g plus r or l - mr, ml, nr, nl, gr, gl), s or f plus any stop (sp, st, sk, fp, ft, fk) or approximant (sr, sl, fr, fl), and any stop plus either approximant (pr, pl, tr, tl, kr, kl).
Short vowels, but not long ones, may be combined in limited circumstances. The following vowel combinations are found with some frequency: ai, ao, ia, ie, yi (this is written as a double i in the Nlaaki alphabet; because it is not distinguishable in the orthography it's written as yi instead of ii), io, iu, ua, ue, ui, wu (this is written as a double u in the Nlaaki alphabet; because it is not distinguishable in the orthography it's written as wu instead of uu), uo. Combinations beginning with a may appear anywhere, and are pronounced as follows: ai as in "pie", ao as in "cow". Combinations beginning with i or u may not appear after r or l (in a cluster or otherwise). The combinations beginning with i approximate the sound represented by the consonant y in English ("kia" would be pronounced "kya"), whereas the ones beginning with u approximate a w ("kui" would be pronounced "kwi"). Other vowel combinations are generally forbidden, but sometimes crop up in very recent loanwords.
Basic syllable construction rule: (C) C V (V) (C)
Stops (p, t, and k) become voiced (pronounced b, d, and g, respectively) when between two vowels, and in clusters before approximants. Therefore, "Nlaaki" is actually pronounced "Nlaagi", and "tra" would really be "dra". This distinction is not marked in the Nlaaki alphabet or in the orthography (which is why Nlaaki is spelled with a k instead of a g) and although a native speaker of Nlaaki will notice that someone failing to follow this rule has an accent, she will have little difficulty understanding someone who does so.
Nlaaki generally stresses the first syllable of any word, as well as any syllables with a long vowel. Two-syllable words in which the second syllable has a long vowel stress the second syllable, not the first. Stress, however, can be adjusted by the speaker to reflect the importance of specific items within a verb - for instance, if a speaker wishes to emphasize the past tense in a verb, he can stress that inflector, even though the past tense inflector does not have a long vowel and would never be the first syllable of a word. Speakers of certain dialects also stress syllables with vowel combinations.