We celebrate today as Mother Tongue Day here in Estonia so, for our international friends, here's (possibly) your first words of Estonian to learn.
Estonian is spoken by just over a million of us and is considered notoriously challenging for English speakers to learn as it's a Finno-Ugric language, unrelated to almost all other European languages.
However, it's so important that everyone around the world can discuss issues like sustainability in all our own languages. Sustainability affects everyone and involves everyone, cross borders, cross cultures, and across society.
The continued use of scientific and technical words in our own language means higher education and advanced research continues in our language too. That underpins prosperity and progress - and is one of the key indicators that our language continues to thrive.
Here at LCA Support, we primarily serve customers in English as we increasingly support companies across Europe, the UK, and the US. Our clients speak a huge variety of languages between themselves too.
But we'll always be passionate about supporting Estonia's development in sustainable construction and will always offer our LCA and EPD services in Estonian too.
Being part of our own country's development and supporting local companies gives us such valuable insight into how and why different rules develop across different markets and which are the best practices to implement.
When you have a small domestic market then your competitiveness depends on understanding international trends and how rules vary across markets.
That's why Estonian companies make such a big impact globally in everything from software to construction materials.
Head emakeelepäeva. Happy Mother Tongue Day.