English grammar
I refer to the letter by O H Kabir above ( 27Dec09). Firstly vowels are required to make a syllable which can be pronounced and it has nothing to do with grammar or meaning of a word. Besides the five explicit vowels of a, e, i, o, and u: y is recognised as a half vowel for the purposes of creating a syllable for pronunciation. Hence we can pronounce words like fly, dry etc of one syllable and slyly which is of two syllables or syzygy, a word of three syllables etc,. However use of y to enable creation of a syllable or syllables is much more restricted than the standard vowels, and syllabic words of this form are well known and are limited in number.
So, y is excluded from the standard list of vowels.
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