There are two contexts in which 'w' is indeed a vowel in English:

1. As a 'stand-alone' vowel. At least four Welsh words which have made their way into English. The best known is 'cwm.' Three others are 'crwth' (might be 'crwdd' in the original Wesh, I'd guess), 'cyr' and 'cwtch.' However, the Oxford English Dictionary lists only cwm and cwtch. So, if you think the OED gets to decide such things, then then cwn and cwtch are Engish words, and the others are not.

2. Dipthongs. E.g., as in down, wow, and caw, and many others. For that matter, some people claim that 'r' in 'butter' acts a a dipthong vowel, as does 'l' in 'bottle,' and 'n' as in 'button.' I'm not sure I buy those exampless, and have seen no authorative ruling on those. I suspect that professional linguists would disagree on those.

Here's the OED entry for 'cwm' and 'cwtch.' I paste the noun usage for cwtch, but it is also in the OED as a verb, meaning to hug or to cuddle, or, in a different usage, to lie down.

I think the pasting of the OED text is 'fair usage.' Also, it's a subscription service, and perhaps my pasting it might get them a subscription or two via this advertising?

Jim

Cwm. A valley; in Phys. Geogr., a bowl-shaped hollow partly enclosed by steep walls lying at the head of a valley or on a mountain slope and formed originally by a glacier; a cirque.

1853 MRS. GASKELL Ruth I. vii. 170 Some 'Cwm', or hollow. 1882 GEIKIE Text-bk. Geol. III. II. ii. 407 Several hundred feet below, in the corrie or cwm at the bottom, lies the re-cemented glacier. 1933 Geogr. Jrnl. ***. 202 The snow-patches are cwm-ice masses occupying deep scallops in an elevated position of the old erosion-surface. 1936 Nature 19 Dec. 1041/2 Its glaciers..widened their heads into cwms and gave to the basin its only fiord. 1951 Times 27 Nov. 5/7 While 'cwm' may occur..purely as a place-name..technically the word is restricted to the huge cauldron-shaped hollows found high up on heavily glaciated slopes. 1953 J. HUNT Ascent of Everest ii. 14 When Mallory saw it..in 1921, he named it the 'Western Cwm'. 1957 G. E. HUTCHINSON Treat. Limnol. I. i. 59 Such amphitheaters are called cirques in the French-speaking parts of the Alps, Kars in the German-speaking regions, cwms in Wales, and corries in Scotland. All four terms have achieved some degree of international usage, but the first seems to have been the most widely employed.


Cwtch, now Welsh English.

1. A cupboard or cubby-hole, esp. used as a hiding place.

1890 J. D. ROBERTSON Gloss. Words County of Gloucester 27 Cooch and corner, nook and cranny. 1973 M. STEPHENS Exiles All 25 We huddled under the cwtsh, making Beasts against the candle's light. 1983 K. GOODING Rainbow Trail vi. 63 A cwtch is a hiding place. 1985 J. EDWARDS Talk Tidy 17 The coal cwtch or the cwtch under the stairs. 1992 Times (Nexis) 28 Feb., And our house like most of the others had a cwch under the stairs, which was the cupboard. 2004 Western Mail (Cardiff) (Nexis) 6 Aug. 15 They assured us if the atom bomb dropped, we'd have three whole minutes (or was it four?) to put brown paper over the windows, retreat to the cwtch under the stairs, and stay cwtched for three or four weeks.

2. A cuddle; a hug. Cf. CWTCH v. 2.

The rule to follow: If two vowels are together, in a word, the first vowel says its name and the second vowel is silent. 

Examples: boat - long /o/ sound

                 flow - long /o/ sound

                 meat - long /e/ sound

Dr. Autry
 

In kindergartner, I was taught that on rare occasion W is a vowel.  Some say that any word ending in W such as cow or tomorrow uses the w as a vowel.  The word that I foond uses W as its only vowel.

The word is CRWTH. 

According to Wikipedia:

crwth is an archaic stringed musical instrument, associated particularly with Welsh music, although once played widely in Europe.

Crwth is a Welsh word, pronounced to rhyme with tooth (IPA: /kruːθ/ or /krʊθ/). The traditional English name is crowd, and the variants crout and crouth are little used today. In Medieval Latin it is called the chorus or crotta. The Welsh word crythor means a performer on the crwth. The Irish word is cruit, although it also was used on occasion to designate certain small harps. The English surnames (family names) Crowder and Crowther denote a player of the crowd, as do the Scottish names MacWhirter and MacWhorter

I hope this has been helpfus since this is the only example I know  that uses W as the sole vowel in the word.

Hi Cyndi,

Consider the word "tow" as in tow your car and you now have an example. Also look at the word "bow" and you get examples of sometimes, bow of a ship and bow and arrows. W is a vowel sometimes just like a y only they continue to dumb down our system. I just happen to be old.

Good luck

OAk

When I was in school, I was taught that the vowels were: (put a sing songy tune to it)

a,e,i,o,u and sometimes y and w.

My husband and I were talking about it tonight and he never heard of it either.  That's why I googled it and found your question.

Mary Ellen