Anyone who has peered in incomprehension at street signs in Bulgaria, trying to remember what sound a Cyrillic "b" makes, or driven straight past a ресторант in their search for a restaurant, might be alarmed by the news that the president of Russia has been calling for more Cyrillic on the internet. Dmitry Medvedev has made the campaign for a domain name in Cyrillic, the alphabet used by Russia, Mongolia and several Eastern European countries, one of his key policies as president, saying: "It is a symbol of the importance of the Russian language and of Cyrillic."

Leaving aside the question of the superiority of Russian, as far as the alphabet goes you can't help but admire him; he has chosen his battleground wisely. Never mind the hearts and minds of the people, this war will be fought and won on the internet.

In an age where information is at our fingertips, Latin script is marching ahead of the game. This spills off the computer screen and into every day life; in the cities of Bulgaria, Cyrillic seems to be cowering in the corner while Latin script hogs the limelight. This is even more poignant when you remember that Bulgaria is the birthplace of Cyrillic, and Bulgarians are immensely proud of their alphabet. With Bulgaria's accession into the European Union in 2007, Cyrillic became the third official alphabet of the union, but since then, the floodgates have opened. Five years ago, almost all street signs were in Cyrillic; now they are helpfully translated for the Western traveller. Any visitors from neighbouring Greece can take their pick as to which bits of the signs they read, having left their own alphabet at the border.

With the growth of globalisation and the predominance of American culture, Latin script, particularly in English, is becoming ever more ubiquitous. Most restaurants, for example, will now offer Western patrons a menu in English, and the Latin script on imported soft drinks such as Coca-Cola is universal. Even some local businesses seem to have abandoned any pretence at Bulgarian; the pun in GloBul, for instance, the Bulgarian mobile phone company, only works if the reader has enough English to know that the word "global" is spelt with an a not a u, which does make you wonder how many clever jokes in words like Mitsubishi and Subaru are lost on us.

It would be foolish, however, to dismiss Cyrillic as dead in the water just yet. In fact, of the six most widely spoken languages in the world, only two of them use the Latin alphabet (English and Spanish, second and fifth most popular, respectively.) Russian is the sixth most widely spoken, and given that Russia is the largest country in the world and the ninth most populous, Cyrillic suddenly seems like a major player. In fact, if Medvedev's claim that 300 million people worldwide use Russian media is true, the question seems to be: why has it taken so long for someone to stand up for Cyrillic?

In fact, it wouldn't be the first time that Russia has tried to promote the alphabet. As the Soviet Union expanded, the Communist Party decreed that all non-Russian languages had to be rendered in Cyrillic; after the collapse of the USSR, most restored their traditional scripts. This was seen as a matter of national pride, to assert each nation's newly found independence.

Pride in one's alphabet is a concept that doesn't seem to have spread west; I have never given the alphabet much thought since I learnt it at four years old. The only institution that really celebrates our alphabet in the West is Sesame Street. In Bulgaria, however, the festival of St Cyril and St Methodius is a national holiday, called "Alphabet, Culture and Education Day". Not the catchiest of names, admittedly, although maybe it looks better in Cyrillic, but there is something to be said for a celebration of letters as the key to all learning. The festival is mentioned in Elizabeth Kostova's book The Historian, and it is, unsurprisingly to anyone who knows anything about the Bulgarian spirit, quite a party.

In Russia, it is an ecclesiastical celebration, but not a national holiday.

Although the alphabet was named after him and is celebrated on his day, St Cyril (Sveti Kiril, in Bulgarian) didn't actually invent it; in fact, his name wasn't even Cyril, it was Constantine. He was given the name Cyril around the time of his death.

Cyril and his brother were monks born in Thessaloniki in the ninth century CE, and between them they invented the Glagolitic alphabet. This was based on Greek, then the lingua franca of Christianity, with extra sounds added to accommodate the Slavic tongues, and was used to translate the Bible for the Slavic people.

The language that they used is now referred to as Old Church Slavonic, and at the time it was quite controversial. Bearing in mind that this was about 200 years before the Eastern and Western churches divided, debate was fierce as to whether the mass should be said in Greek or Latin, and the brothers were caught in the middle.

During their lifetime they were admired by the church in Rome for their considerable learning, and enjoyed some degree of influence in Constantinople in the East. However, after their deaths, their followers were exiled from Great Moravia, a Slavic state in present Slovakia and the Czech Republic. They fled to the First Bulgarian Empire, and there they developed the Cyrillic alphabet. It is often credited to St Clement of Ohrid (Sveti Kliment Ohridski), and named Cyrillic in honour of the great missionary.

A statue of St Cyril now stands next to Veliko Turnovo University, high on a hill overlooking the city. He is holding his hands up above his head; a friend joked that this was a gesture of abject apology to all Westerners struggling with his alphabet, although perhaps he is trying to hold back the tide of Latin script.

The tide, however, may be about to turn. Russian is the largest native language in Europe, and now that the Kremlin is throwing its weight behind the campaign for Cyrillic, the alphabet has more than a fighting chance. It rests on the battle for the internet. If the information superhighway can find room for Cyrillic, there'll be no stopping it.