Non-nasalized vowels can be heard as nasalized as well. In general, vowels tend to become nasalized adjacent to another nasal vowel or consonant when there is no intervening obstruent. On the other hand, final nasal vowels tend to become oral. However, nasal vowels are always short, regardless of their position. Examples: 'girl' and 'mountain' Vowel clusters and long vowels According to Hans Wolff (65), common Osage vowel clusters are: iu for example: niuʒõ 'Neosho River' íe for example: wíe 'I' íĩ for example: kasíĩte 'tomorrow' iuĩ for example: ékiuĩka 'don't' éa for example: cʼéaðe 'I killed him' aĩ for example: hówaĩke 'where?' óa for example: tóa 'this one' Vowel length is important in Osage, but it is hard to perceive and has a good deal of variation. For example, long vowels are often reduced to short ones when they are not accented. Quintero took long vowels to be the underlying form in such situations. There is not enough information to specify exactly how the accent system works in Osage, and there is still uncertainty about Osage vowel length. Oral vowels are long before non-stop consonants and in final stressed position. When they are unstressed in final position, they are always short. Lengthening of short vowels often occurs in questions. Example: 'you want' becomes ? Long vowels also arise when ð is omitted between identical vowels. Example: ðakʼéwaða 'be kind to them' may become ðakʼéwaa. When e(e) changes to a(a), an immediately preceding c is often replaced by t (thought not always) Example: océ 'look for, hunt for' becomes otá 'look for it!' Diphthongs The vowel sequences and are almost certainly diphthongs. The Osage script has letters to represent each of the diphthongs. Consonants There are thirty-one consonant phonemes in Osage, twenty-two of which are voiceless and nine are voiced. However, Osage has a rich system of stop sounds, known as the stop series, or the stop sequence. (See below) Stop series The stop series can be grouped according to five categories: Voiceless preaspirated or fortis: which may be pronounced as geminates or preaspirated. As in other Siouan languages they sometimes derive from h-C sequences, but not always. Voiceless plain or lenis: which are tenuis, and often lightly voiced. Postaspirated: which never appear as a surface form. Ejective . They cannot appear as the second member of a consonant cluster. Historical *tʼ is in Osage. Voiced: with b being the only