Danny Wier wrote:
> Now there are some languages that lack /u/, and Japanese is a famous case.
> It has the unrounded counterpart /M/, however. Cree and Obijwe among the
> Algonquian languages, Navajo and some others in Athabaskan, and various
> other Native American languages also lack /u/. I can't think of any
> languages anywhere that don't have /i/ - unless you count Georgian, which
> lacks /i/ but instead has /I/, so I honestly don't want to count it.
I believe there are some with /e/ but not /i/.
The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language lists a language Amuesha
(Andean-Equatorial family) with a vowel system /e a o/.