@ktm5124 Yes, the "oo" can begin a word - the only vowel sound in biblical Hebrew which does. "Vav with dagesh ... devoid of other vowel"
is a vowel (called "shureq"), and that's not a "dagesh", it's a vowel sign. (There are various names for dot-in-letter when it's not doing the dagesh job.) See
GKC para 26a, part 1 for the explanation.