Those letters are not vowels, no. Like in Hebrew, they're more akin to separation characters. Like, in latin languages you write 2 letters and you have the diff

Those letters are not vowels, no. Like in Hebrew, they're more akin to separation characters. Like, in latin languages you write 2 letters and you have the difference between open and closed vowels. Certain rules then dictate when you have 2 open vowels after one another, you're supposed to introduce a word boundary, and abrupt fall-of of the first vowel immediately followed by the second, also long (fun thing is that, of course the rules started changing. So in latin ae the a and e are short vowels, like 'ai', but in English you'd say 'a-e'), which is sort-of the same in latin. It's just in latin you write the vowel before and after the split, in semitic languages you write that there is a split. These letters make the difference between, say, kaba and ka-aba. Or agan and haganah ('haganaa'). But you'd still use the same letters for keaba, kuoba, and other words (if they existed).