Are W and Y vowels?

I am bereft.

This wasn’t supposed to happen. You were meant to agree with me. The defeat is even more crushing than it appears, because I voted for myself from an other account. (Cheat.) By my calculations, this means only one voter agreed with my POV. Make yourself known to me, friend; we can set up our own renegade cult, and call it The Ywy Society. Or the Wyw Club. Your call.

W and Y are vowels, people, they are vowels.

My favourite definition of a vowel — favourite because I cherry-picked it to perfectly support my stance — is this one from dictionary.com:

a speech sound produced without occluding, diverting, or obstructing the flow of air from the lungs.

You can say aaaaa, you can say eeee, you can say iiiiiii, and so on, and you can also say wwwww, and yyyyyyy. Try saying ddddddddddd or ppppppp without “occluding”. See?

They say Y is sometimes considered a sixth vowel — but why ‘sometimes’? Vowels are in the minority. They need extras. Just make it ‘always’.

And W? Say it slowly. Double. U. It’s TWICE the vowel of other vowels, for pity’s sake!

As a Welsh-Italian who has studied Russian, I add the following as supporting evidence:

Welsh has seven vowels – you guessed it, A, E, I, O, U, W and Y. When are the Welsh ever wrong about anything?

The Italians call the Y “i-Greca” – or Greek I. When are the Italians ever wrong about anything?

Russian boasts ELEVEN vowels in their beautiful language, including this lovely symbol — Й — which is a Y.

You have all condemned me to a lifetime of torture during Countdown.

I hope you’re totally wywwwywy with yourselves.