It all goes back to the great Norman-French sacking of Wales in 1069, in which they stole the vast majority of that nation's vowels. Ever since, the Welsh have had to rely on double consonants and a dubious use of the letter "y" to make their language pronounceable. As a result of this action, the French have since had such an abundance of vowels that they long ago gave up on trying to pronounce all of them.