Vowel letter

A vowel letter is a letter that typically represents a vowel sound.

The vowel letters in the Latin alphabet, the alphabet principally used for English, are A, E, I, O, and U. Additionally, the consonant letters W and Y are sometimes used to represent vowel sounds, but are primarily classed as consonant letters.

Vowel letters principally form vowel phonograms. The letter U also has a secondary part in consonant digraphs ⟨bu⟩, ⟨cu⟩, ⟨gu⟩, ⟨su⟩ and ⟨qu⟩.

Vowel letters are combined to form ligatures; ash (Ææ) and oethel (Œœ).

Lower case Latin vowel letters are all turtle letters. They can have diacritics (accents) added to them.

Vowel letters also exist in related alphabets. In the Greek alphabet, there are seven vowel letters; alpha (Αα), epsilon (Εε), eta (Ηη), iota (Ιι), omicron (Οο), upsilon (Υυ), and omega (Ωω). In the Cyrillic alphabet there are more.

In some games, vowel letters are handled differently to consonant letters.