  We introduce a simple flavor symmetry breaking scheme, in which charged
lepton masses have a strong hierarchy and neutrino masses are almost
degenerate. It is possible to obtain a natural suppression of lepton flavor
mixing between the 1st and 3rd families as well as the approximate decoupling
of atmospheric and solar neutrino oscillations with nearly bi-maximal mixing
factors. The similarity and difference between lepton and quark flavor mixing
schemes are briefly discussed.
