A syllable onset is the consonant or consonant cluster that appears before the vowel of a syllable. The Burmese script has 33 letters to indicate the initial consonant of a syllable and four diacritics to indicate additional consonants in the onset. Like other abugidas, including the other members vowels are indicated in Burmese script by diacritics, which are placed above, below, before or after the consonant character. A consonant letter with no vowel diacritic has the inherent vowel [a̰] (often reduced to [ə] when another syllable follows in the same word).