Is the letter Y a vowel or a consonant? 

The answer is that it depends. It is the one letter in English that can officially be either one. It has the job of being one or the other depending upon where it is in a word and what kind of letter it is next to.

Y is a vowel when it is next to a consonant or in between two consonants.  Examples are "bicycle",  "marry",  "sky", "type",  "cyclone" and the woman's name "Yvonne".  It can have the sound of "ee" or "eye".

It is a consonant when it is next to a vowel or in between two vowels.  Examples are "yellow",  "say" ,  "Mayan", "mayor" and "prayer".

So the word "rhythm" does have a vowel because the y is in between two consonants .

As with anything in English, all rules can be broken.  If we borrow words from other languages ("Crwth" as mentioned by another member for a Scottish instrument)  or we create a word to represent a sound (grrrrrrr), then it can be an exception. We also have some technical words such as "wysiwyg", pronounced WIZ-zee-wig, which means "what you see is what you get" for when a computer program prints exactly what you see on its screen .  

Thanks so much for that list.  I do crossword puzzles and that will be a great help with words that use a Y.

I do respectfully disagree with the person who made this list when they say it is a list of words with no vowels.  In most of the words the Y is used as a vowel.  But it is a handy list.  I will also use this list with my students when I teach them about Y having the job of being both a vowel and a consonant. 

Some of the "words" are really onomatopoeia, a Greek word which we use for a word which imitates a sound: brrrr, grrrr.  These are exceptions.   Other words in the list are from other languages which do not always require a vowel : CRWTHS

In general, normal English words always require a vowel except under exceptional situations.  But I always tell my students that English has many rules.  And once we agree on the rules, we immediately break the rules.  It says something about language.  My Spanish teacher wisely told us that language is the only true democracy.  People own their language and use it as they please.  So many exceptions arise.

There was one really interesting entry in the list "nth".  This comes from math when the letters nth are used to show an unknown value to multiply a number by its own value several times.  We say a situation is carried to the nth degree in order to say it is carried too far.