Re: Ease of pronunciation

Quoting René Uittenbogaard <ruittenb@...>:

> Our French teacher told us yesterday that [e] is "easier" to pronounce than
> [E]. Now although I personally find that to be true, I doubt that this is
> a general truth.
I find that somewhat surprising, since, supposedly, [E] is the commoner sound
crosslinguistically.

> Do any of you know whether there are vowels that are inherently easier to
> pronounce than others - for all people?
No idea, but I suspect any such differences are swamped by language-specific
neural wiring that makes the sounds of that language come "naturally".

                                                 Andreas