Did a quick look around the net for phonetic sound files and found this
version of english vowels.
http://multiweb.lib.calpoly.edu/medialib/epa/vowels.html
Perhaps, robin
or someone in the know would care to point to the english vowel that is
closest. Then phonetics site with the exact sound to avoid confusion
(with notation as well as sound if possible).
When I drop Lojban's name into an English sentence, I Englishize
it because I can't switch accents from one word to the next. But the
Spanish and French "o" sounds are what I have always attempted to
imitate. They are an unchanged sound with a crisp breakoff at the end
instead of a glided "u". Here is
a sound file of Colin Wright from my answering machine followed by me
on the podcast, followed by a computer synthesizing a song:
http://www.nemorathwald.com/jbocradi/the_o_sound.mp3
-epkat