When I was a wee tad, in Minnesota in the middle '30s, the teacher taught us that "The vowels are A, E, I, O, U, and sometimes Y and W".
No problem, to me.
Actually, thinking about how words are really pronounced, it seems to me that Y is always a vowel sound, and that W is only a consonant when used (as in German) to represent a V sound. I suppose one could quibble that usually those letters are actually diphthongs, not vowels as such, but that seems to me to be splitting hairs.
Dave Oesterreich