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From: Jim Cheetham <jim@gonzul.net>
Subject: [lojban-beginners] Re: Anyone there?
Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2004 20:05:41 +1200
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On Aug 19, 2004, at 7:25 PM, Robin Lee Powell wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 19, 2004 at 04:19:42PM +1000, Tristan Mc Leay wrote:
>> Why is it that [I] isn't an allophone of /i/? For most people in the
>> world, they're close enough that it's hard to distinguish anyway...
>> (I'm a native English speaker, and out of context, I find hearing [i]
>> vs [I] difficult; [I] is many times easier for me to produce than [i]
>> though.)
>
> /me blinks.
>
> You find the "i" in "bit" hard to distinguish from the "ee" in "beet"?
>
> That's just bizarre to me.  What dialect?  I'm pure American English.
>
That would fit with a New Zealand accent - beer, bear and bare all 
sound the same over here. Takes a little getting used to ... I almost 
started insisting my name was "Jem" just to get the [i] sound the way I 
was used to!

.djim