What is the eleven vowels of American English?

Answer 1

There are only five officially recognized vowels in the English language.

A E I O U

The letter Y is occasionally used as a vowel in a few words. Some argue that W is occasionally used as a vowel, and hold up the words cow or owl as proof, due to the way in which the W is pronounced, but in fact it is still a consonant.

With that out of the way, I can address your question, or rather, CORRECT your question and then answer it.

Your question should be:

What are the eleven vowel sounds of the American English language.

English has "five vowels" (i.e. 5 letters: a, e, i, o & u), but linguists argue that English has in the range of ELEVEN distinct vowel sounds! (And you wondered why spelling in 3rd grade was so hard)

You can hear most of them by using the frame b_t, as in:

beet, bit, bait, bite, bat, baht (and distinct in some dialects, bought), but, boot, boat, bout and beaut.