The official state language is Uzbek. It is a member of the Eastern Turkic, or Karluk, language group. There are several Uzbek dialects. The written language that preceded modern Uzbek was written in an Arabic script, and Arabic letters continued to be used for about a decade after the creation of a modern Uzbek language under the Soviets. In the late 1920s, however, the Soviet government decreed that a Latin-based alphabet be used instead. Then in 1940 the government imposed a modified Cyrillic script (the script of the Russian language). In 1993 the government of independent Uzbekistan resolved to gradually revert to the Latin alphabet. Most ethnic minorities in Uzbekistan tend to speak their own native languages. Russian was the preferred language during the Soviet period and is still widely used in the cities.