Akkadian, however, had separate words for these two meanings: šadú 'hill' and mātu 'country'. When Sumerian cuneiform was adapted for writing Akkadian, this was ambiguous because both words were written with the same character (conventionally transcribed KUR, after its Sumerian pronunciation). To alert the reader as to which Akkadian word was intended, the phonetic complement -ú was written after KUR if hill was intended, so that the characters KUR-ú were pronounced šadú, whereas KUR without a phonetic complement was understood to mean mātu 'country'.