| æ || æ̃ || ɑ || ɑ̃ |} Five of the vowels have an oral-nasal contrast, which persists even before a nasal consonant coda (i.e. the syllables and contrast, where C = any consonant, V = any vowel, N = any nasal consonant). For example, the Taos has a syllable before as well as syllable before as in the words ('maternal aunt') and ('this'). Morphemes exemplifying Taos monophthongs are in the table below: {| class="wikitable" style="line-height: 1.1em;" ! Vowel !! IPA !! Gloss | style="background-color: lightGrey;" rowspan="7" | ! Vowel !! IPA !! Gloss |- ! | || 'what' ! | || 'he met' |- ! | || 'he stopped' ! | || 'who' |- ! | || (duoplural noun suffix) ! | || 'hunt' (verb) |- ! | || 'you' | style="background-color: lightGrey;" colspan="3" | |- ! | || 'he made' ! | || 'he danced' |- ! | || 'yes' ! | || 'blow' |} Monophthong phonetics and allophony Vowels have lowered variants in closed syllables and when unstressed. The in closed syllables is somewhat lower than the in unstressed syllables. {| | || ('to stand') || > || || (closed syllable) |- | || ('weapon') || > || || (unstressed) |- | || ('his-garment-around') || > || || (closed syllable) |- | || ('ladder') || > || || (unstressed) |} The vowel has phonetic "inner rounding". The vowel has a variant with very narrow lip rounding before : {| | || ('rain') || > || |- | || ('to love' [reflexive possessive]) || > || |- | || ('it was being burned') || > || |} The mid vowels may be phonetically somewhat centralized. Front is typically slightly centered in both stressed and unstressed syllables. Back ranges from back to central and is when unstressed. Although both are mid, (upper-mid) is phonetically higher than which is phonetically lower-mid . In contrast to the high back vowel , mid is unrounded. Unlike the other vowels, has no nasal counterpart. Examples: {| | || ('eagles') || > || |- | || ('it was squeezed') || > || |- | || ('star') || > || |} The oral mid-front vowel predominantly occurs in suffixes while nasalized is relatively common in stems. Nasalized is phonetically lower than its oral counterpart: : {| | || ('act of cutting') || > || |} Oral is phonetically front and is uncommon in syllables