"I'd like to buy a vowel."

My aunt called me without so much of a greeting. She just barged in with a question...

"What are the vowels?"

I was taken aback for a bit then replied "a,e,i,o u"

I may have forgotten a lot from what I learned in school, after all its been awhile but I think I still know my alphabet.

"Then how come JJ's teacher said that "y" is a vowel. She underlined the letter "y" in the words like "try" and "multiply" as being vowels. The instruction was for the students to color the vowels in each word." My cousin didn't color the letters "y" and "w".

JJ is my 7 year old cousin who is in first grade. My aunt checks his quizzes and homework all the time like she should. And after the issue with a math problem (will explain that later) and after finding out that the teachers do not even check if the students did their homework right or not, she has become more vigilant. It turns out that as long as the students submitted their homework, its fine and because they have a certain schedule to follow. It becomes the students' responsibility to catch up.

What?? "Y" is a vowel? Well, I did explain to my aunt that the letter "y" does sometimes take the place of a vowel sound when its anywhere else in the syllable and the word doesn't start with "y". It takes the vowel sound when the letter before it is a consonant but as far as "y" being a vowel letter is concerned I don't think it is. This recent thing has been an ongoing discussion within the family. We have asked almost everyone, with ages ranging from 7 year olds to 65 year olds and we all have the same answer "a,e,i,o,u". Even on the show WheelOfFortune, the contestants don't say "Y" or "W" when they ask if they could buy a vowel.

My aunt went to the teacher to verify and she indeed was told that "y" is a vowel but my aunt wasn't convinced so she asked the teacher if she (the teacher) could provide her with some writing or update that "Y" and "W" are now considered vowels. I don't know if she has gotten it. Since we haven't gotten anything from the teacher, another aunt's co-worker went to as far as online to get to the bottom of it. In the website of OxfordDictionaries, it said that "yes the letter Y is a vowel or a consonant! In terms of sound. The letter Y can be used to represent different sounds in different words, and can therefore fit either definition." The site went to explain that "whether the letter Y is a vowel or a consonant is therefore rather an arbitrary decision." and add that "the consonant sound is not consistently represented in E.nglish spelling by any other letter, and perhaps for this reason Y tends traditionally to be counted among the consonants."

I knew about this. All of us knew about this. It pertains more to the rules in spelling and grammar which there are a lot but I do not think its about the letter. How then should the instruction in my cousin's quiz been formatted for a 7 year old to understand. Or the bigger question, were the students been made aware of such a rule for them to answer it right? My cousin's quiz wasn't the only one so he wasn't some specific case.

My aunt asking for some proof was to find out if she (my aunt) is so out of touch with today's education and lessons and feared that she would be teaching her children the wrong thing. The teacher was okay in looking for a proof to give to my aunt but after she telling my aunt that "its how it is in this country." I was livid. What was the teacher trying to say? That we were not taught right in the P.hilippines? That we have a different set of alphabets, vowels and consonants? Apparently this teacher didn't know much about history because if I remember right the first teachers in the P.hilippines were from this country which explains why we follow A.merican E.nglish as the medium of instructions. Maybe she should have explained it the way Oxford explained it and kept such comments to herself. My aunt was merely asking, making a clarification and not questioning her teaching abilities even if my aunt has reason to. This is after all the same teacher who gave her students' math homework to a teacher's aide to correct without a proper answer key and who corrected the students' right answer with her wrong one. The math problem was: Four friends bought a pizza. It was divided equally among them. How much did each friend get? The choices were: one whole, 1/2, 1/4, 3/4 Correct answer: 1/4. According to the teacher's aide its one whole. Which clearly is wrong. My aunt went to tell the teacher and it was soon corrected. So in the case of the "y" and the "w", my aunt was right in asking for some explanation and clarification as well.

So what is it then? How do we then answer the question...

"What are the vowels?"