Quoting Nik Taylor <yonjuuni@...>:
> 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/.
I'd be itching to analyze that as /i a u/.
Andreas