marks": the rough breathing , marking an sound at the beginning of a word, or the smooth breathing , marking its absence. The letter rho (?), although not a vowel, also carries rough breathing in a word-initial position. If a rho was geminated within a word, the first ? always had the smooth breathing and the second the rough breathing ?? leading to the transliteration .

The vowel letters carry an additional diacritic in certain words, the