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].
== History ==
The kun-yomi pronunciation of the character (濁) is nigori; hence the daku-ten may also be called the nigori-ten. This character...