Are "au" & "ue" vowels?


I'm a new learner of a day & am confused by my Japanese learning app that puts
au & ue together with a, i, u, e, o under a section called Japanese vowels.
Other places say there is only 5 vowels so why is my app including au & ue as
vowels?




Short answer: No, あう and うえ are not "Japanese vowels". You are right, Japanese
has only 5 vowels, あ, い, う, え and お.

The app you are referring to in the comments is Skritter, not Skitter.

The lesson "hiragana" contains different sets of vocabulary words to learn
along hiragana, and they are classified in groups. I think it's just silly
that they decided to group the words "au" あう and "ue" うえ along with the vowels
in a particular group, its misleading:

![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/oBE4n.jpg)

あう and うえ are just Japanese words that happen to be formed by vowels only, but
they are no vowels itself. If you click on the section Japanese vowels, you
will find that whereas あ, い, う, え, お are marked as just "hiragana", あう and うえ
are listed with their meanings as a word, namely "to meet" and "up, above":

![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/MiQdv.jpg)

I believe that the (poor) reason why they decided to place the words あう and うえ
with the vowels is that they are formed by only hiragana vowels, but I think
this approach is prone to confuse the beginner. Moreover, there are other
words formed by vowels only (い "stomach", え "picture") that are not in that
group, so I don't see the point on grouping あう and うえ along with the vowels...
All the other words presented in the lesson seem to be grouped by consonants
(S category, T category and so on).

