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--- In engelang@yahoogroups.com, "Mike S." <maikxlx@...> wrote: > /a E i O u e o/ - similar to Italian. Sounds nice, but too hard for too > many people IMHO. Very easy for Portuguese speakers, but very hard for Spanish speakers. I know Spanish speakers who can't figure out the difference between /O/ and /o/ or /E/ and /e/ in spite of being in Brazil for many years. PS: "/O/ and /o/ or /E/ and /e/" is another case of common ambiguity. > which sees more use in Tikybau than in Lojban. My reasoning is this: if > people can pronounced /a e i o u/ with rounded back vowels and unrounded > front vowels, with a little practice, people can pronounce /y 9/ too, and > therefore that's probably the best choice if you want seven vowels. I have already had both German and French classes. In both cases, most of the students were common people with no formal phonetic awareness. In the German classes, most students had problems to distinguish between <u> and <ü> or between <o> and <ö>. In the French classes, on the other hand, most students could easily perceive the difference between <ou> and <u> or between <o> and <eu>. I guess that this difference is because <u> and <eu> are much more used in French than <ü> and <ö> are used in German.