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Vowels
Pidanjinu has just five vowels, each written by a single letter.
a - as in 'father'
e - as in 'pet'
i - as in 'pizza'
o - as in 'Poe' or 'poet'
u - as in 'tutu'
The Pidanjinu vowel system can be schematically represented as fitting this shape in a human mouth:
Vowel clusters are pronounced as in Japanese, where each vowel in a cluster has equal weight and is pronounced as if it were a simple vowel. Vowel clusters are not pronounced like diphthongs.
Consonants
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Voiceless
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Voiced
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Stops
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p - as in 'pot'
t - as in 'tot'
k - as in 'cot'
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b - as in 'bought'
d - as in 'dot'
g - as in 'got'
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Fricatives
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f - as in 'fought'
s - as in 'sought'
h - as in 'hot'
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v - as in 'vote'
z - as in 'zit'
j /zh/ - as in 'de jure'
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Clusters
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cy /ky/ - as in 'cute'
qu /kw/ - as in 'quote'
xs /ks/ - as in 'tux'
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Liquids
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l - as in 'lap'
r - as in 'rap'
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Nasals
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m - as in 'map'
n - as in 'nap'
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Semivowels
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w - as in 'whap'
y - as in 'yap'
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Phonotactics
The basic syllable patterns of Pidanjinu are:
 CVCVm
CVn
C = any Pidanjinu consonant or consonant cluster (e.g., 'cy', 'qu' and 'xs')
V = any Pidanjinu vowel
Possible vowel clusters, where each vowel is pronounced distinctly, include ai, au, ei, ie, io, iu, oa, ou, ua.
Guidelines For English Speakers
As an experienced English speaker, you will need to get use to the following:
The letter 'j' is always /zh/ as in 'de jure'. The /zh/ sound does occur in English, but it written many different ways -- none of them 'zh'! The regular 'j' sound, as in English 'just', is in fact actually a /d/ sound followed by /zh/, a combination rarely permitted in other languages. Since the /dzh/ (English 'j') combination isn't used in Pidanjinu, the letter 'j' has been pressed into service for /zh/ (which, like /sh/, never occured in Latin).
The letter 'x' has the same value as in English (/ks/) but in Pidanjinu only begins syllables. This will take some practice to pronounce correctly: xsepofi, /ksepofi/; xsigo, /ksigo/, "destruction".
Stress & Syllables
The second syllable is stressed for interjections: xsi-GO! "Damn!" I'm currently uncertain of stress for other words.
Design Notes
The phonology was designed to use all 26 letters in a manner that seemed fairly natural to English speakers while keeping the number of sounds to a minimum.
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