゙
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Dakuten (濁点?, lit. "voicing mark"), colloquially ten-ten (点々?, "dots"), is a diacritic sign most often used in the Japanese kana syllabaries to indicate that the consonant of a syllable should be pronounced voiced, for instance, on sounds that have undergone rendaku (sequential voicing).
Handakuten (半濁点?), colloquially maru (丸?, "circle"), is a diacritic used with the kana for syllables starting with h to indicate that they should instead be pronounced with [p].
The kun'yomi pronunciation of the character (濁?) is nigori; hence the daku-ten may also be called the nigori-ten. This character, meaning muddy or turbid, stems from historical Chinese phonology, where consonants were traditionally classified as clear (清 "voiceless"), lesser-clear (次清 "aspirated") and muddy (濁 "voiced"). (See: Middle Chinese#Initials)