Important!

[TaiDaishar]

Vowels actually tend to matter least, and it's not surprising that (not counting y, of course), they tend to be less distinctive as letters go.

I know this thread started with a research report on English, but Griselda 's post got me thinking about Hebrew, where vowels are represented by ancillary dots and lines below and around the consonant characters (and lets also remember that the Torah is written with no vowel marks whatsoever (so I'm told by my wife)). Apparently English is not the only language where vowels are less relevant than consonants.

Just to correct you a bit: the Torah is written in vowels all the time, although you are right about the relative importance of vowels in Hebrew, most people write and read without vowels and vowels are mostly used only when writting a foreign word or a name.

Also the Torah has a lot more vowels than today's Hebrew and the combinations of vowels in the Torah can make you smash your head into a wall when trying to read it for your Bar Mitzva :)