On Fri, Aug 17, 2012 at 5:31 PM, And Rosta <and.rosta@gmail.com <mailto:and.rosta@gmail.com>> wrote:
Jonathan Jones, On 17/08/2012 21:19:
It shouldn't be difficult at in Lojban. {ii} is a diphthong
pronounced "YEE", {i} is a vowel pronounced "EE".
...and that's easy only for native anglophones, helped by the diphthongal character of "EE" in most accents.
I highly doubt that. The consonant-y sound appears in a whole variety of languages.While Japanese doesn't have "yi", it does have や"ya", ゆ"yu", and よ"yo", which are distinctive sounds from あ"a", う"u", and お"o".