Language teachers, learners and other professionals across the USA are celebrating National Grammar Day on March 4. The holiday, created by Martha Brockenbrough in 2008, celebrates the rules and best practices for the English language. Brockenbrough is the founder of the Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar, or SPOGG, which operates a website where Brockenbrough writes about different language issues.

Mignon Fogarty, who is organizing National Grammar Day celebrations this year, wrote the book “Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing.” Fogarty appeared on the NBC television program “Today” on Wednesday. She discussed new additions to the English language. “People think that dictionaries choose new words because they are proper, she said.” But mostly they choose words because people use them.”

The American Dialect Society chooses a word every year that is new or used in a new way .The choice for 2015 Word of the Year was “they,” used to refer to “he” or “she”. The Oxford English Dictionary adds new words after finding evidence people are using the words often. Researchers for the dictionary also look for evidence the words will be used well into the future.

Grammarly is a software application, or app, which can study writing and find grammar mistakes. In preparation for National Grammar Day, Grammarly studied the writing on the Twitter accounts of the 50 people with the most followers in the world and counted the average number of mistakes in their writing. Then the top 10 accounts with the fewest mistakes were listed.

Comedian Conan O’Brien had the best grammar. He averaged 0.21 mistakes for every 100 words he wrote. Businessman Bill Gates had the second best grammar, with an average of 0.22 mistakes. President Barack Obama came third with an average of 0.26 mistakes.

The National Grammar Day website has many resources for language learners. You can celebrate the day by reading our weekly series “Everyday Grammar.”

There are some 7,000 languages spoken worldwide, each unique, using different sounds, vocabularies and structures. Charles the Great said: “To have a second language is to have a second soul.” This begs the question: Does the language we speak shape who we are? As it turns out, yes.

In societies such as the United States or Western Europe, self-expression and language precision are valued. Asian cultures, on the other hand, prefer an indirect form of communication. Words like “perhaps” and “maybe” are used more than “yes” or “no”. Americanism takes an informal approach to communication. Therefore, it’s OK to refer to a stranger or the boss as “you”. However, the Thai language has 12 forms of the same pronoun, choosing one depends on status. In this way, languages are essential in leading any culture, be that our own or otherwise.

People who speak different languages notice different things, depending on the constructs of their mother tongue. Take an accident. In English, it’s OK to say: “She broke the glass.” But in a language like Spanish, you’d probably go with: “The glass broke.” The same incident produces two different responses. English speakers will remember who’s at fault, because their language asks them to, while Spanish speakers are more likely to remember it was an accident. This has real consequences, especially when it comes to crime and punishment.

Professor Jim Cummins has written extensively on mother tongues. For Cummins, the stronger our home language, the easier it is for us to learn others. Of course, research also shows that being bilingual gives people many advantages in life. Linguist Julien Leyre writes that learning another language develops our ability to “understand the mental world of another person, based on the language they use, and how that world is different from our own.”

Our mother tongue is central to how we think, what we know and who we are. Like us, languages are living things that change over time and must be cared for to survive. By doing so, we protect not just the linguistic structures or vocabularies we use, but the culture, knowledge and power behind them.

As one of the most important languages in the world, Latin had humble beginnings. It originated along the Tiber River in Italy and only a handful of people spoke the language. Over time, Latin became more well-known as Romans gained political power. Many famous literary texts and scientific classifications were written in Latin. Even though knowing Latin indicated a person was educated, according to Britannica, in the 20th century far fewer people learned Latin, leading it to be classified as a “dead” language.

There are around 7,000 living languages in the world, but, according to Britannica, “more than half are at risk of dying out by the end of the 21st century.” Civilizations evolve over time and so do languages. More often than not, a language dies because everyone who speaks the language dies. For example, Marie Smith Jones, perhaps the last native speaker of the Alaskan Eyak language, died at the age of 89 in 2008, and so did the language. Now, fewer and fewer people speak Latin, which raises public’s awareness about its protection.

Actually, there are many other reasons as to why Latin should be protected or taught. “It is a window into a fascinating ancient civilization, and studying an ancient civilization teaches us to respect different points of view and unfamiliar cultural practices,” says Kathleen Coleman, James Loeb Professor of Harvard University.

Since it isn’t used in ordinary conversations, there are a lot of difficulties that arise from teaching Latin. “Teaching a ‘dead’ language is different from teaching other languages,” explains Coleman, “because there are no native speakers to show us how it sounds or answer questions about the meaning of words or explain idioms. Though it’s hard, fortunately, we still can find the answers to our questions from the broken evidence available in written texts.”