harflar

Harflar is the Uzbek term for letters, the basic symbols of a writing system used to represent the sounds of a language. In Uzbek linguistics, each harf corresponds to a specific phoneme, and sequences of harflar form syllables and words.

Harflar are traditionally organized into vowels and consonants. Vowels carry the vocalic sounds, while consonants produce obstructions or constrictions in the vocal tract. The set of harflar used for Uzbek reflects its phonology, and the writing system encodes phonemes rather than the full speech stream.

Historically, Uzbek has been written in multiple scripts. Before the 20th century Arabic script was common; from the Soviet era Cyrillic was used; since the independence in the early 1990s a Latin-based alphabet has been adopted in most contexts, while Cyrillic remains in use in some communities and media. The shift aimed to better reflect Uzbek phonology and to facilitate literacy and digital use.

In the modern Uzbek alphabet, some harflar are formed with diacritics or digraphs to represent sounds not found in ordinary Latin letters. Examples include combinations or special characters to distinguish similar sounds, ensuring a one-to-one mapping between harflar and phonemes. The writing system is designed to be taught to learners and to be compatible with computer encoding.

In digital contexts, harflar are encoded as Unicode characters, allowing Uzbek text to be stored, displayed, and processed across platforms. Keyboard layouts and input methods are designed to ease typing of both ordinary letters and special Uzbek characters.