It's like this for most of the "vowelless" languages. Hebrew, for instance, still has alef and ayin, and depending on whose lessons you go with, they can be described as silent letters or vowels, or just sort of ignored because no one really wants to explain them. And if they're anything like our own alphabet, the answers have changed over the years as pronunciation itself may have changed. Dumb question for you... is Y a vowel?