After having spent many years in the Czech Republic, I have come quite far with my czech studies. I would say I speak it better than most western foreigners here. My dream was always to achieve absolute fluency in the language.
Now I have decided to leave the country. If everything goes well I will start a new live in Malta in just a couple of weeks.
Even though I am beyond excited to relocate to this beautiful island, I feel weirdly sad about not having achieved my fluency goal. I put so much time into my czech learning and I actually want to continue learning it. But knowing that it will not have any practical implications anymore, I feel I should rather plunge into Maltese or even Italian. I also dont want to forget my Czech and I feel an emotional connection to the language but I probably wont speak it again in any daily situiation I am feeling weirdly sentimental about it leaving it behind. Should I keep learning czech on Malta purely for myself or should I let go and concentrate on the local language under the danger that I will forget what I worked for so hard?
If you have reached an ok-ish level, then it’s not difficult for you to keep it in the “background” while you concentrate on a new language. After you’re able to understand and enjoy some native video content, all you have to do is watch some videos about topics you like in Czech on a regular basis Try to understand all you can and maybe look up some words you are not quite sure about, you can add some advanced material for foreign learners as well if you find it: a podcast, for example.
The idea is that you don’t need so much reading or structured learning after you achieve that kind of level, so you can get a lot of mileage from just a small amount of learning time.
As long as you do that a few times a week for about half an hour (or even 20 minutes), you’ll keep your Czech alive and even improve it, although not so fast as when you were concentrating on it. Study your new language for rest of the time you used to set apart for learning Czech and you’ll be doing all right.
On the other hand, if your level is not high enough for you to understand spoken content, then you’ll probably be forgetting your Czech very fast once you stop studying it consistently, so you really need to choose between keeping it or learning a new language.
Even in that case, you can get some comfort knowing that, if you ever go back to Czech, you’d be able to recover it way faster than it took you to learn it even if you allow it to rust now. However, you’d still find that you have lost a lot of ground, which feel incredibly frustrating.
[Edit] Judging from your stats on Lingq, I’m pretty sure that you can move Czech to the “background mode” that I mentioned without problems. If that is the case, don’t worry. Invest those minutes and you’ll be more than OK. Notice that many of us here have learned several languages and we don’t have a lot of trouble keeping them sharp as long as we reach a good level before moving on and make sure to go back to them regularly.
Add some short but intensive immersion experiences in the Czech Republic when you feel like it, and you’ll even be able to achieve your fluency goals some day, although it may take a while.
I wish you success.
I definitely don’t think you’ll have any problem to keep your Czech going, considering your knowledge of the language. You can always find people that speak Czech in Malta as well, and connect with them every month. Or you can make calls etc. Don’t worry, you spent many years in the Czech Republic, you won’t lose it so easily. Imho.
The distance from Valleta to Prague is about the same as from New York to St. Louis. There may not be a direct flight, but I imagine that you’d be able to visit from time to time if you want.
I wouldn’t worry about forgetting Czech if you have lived in the country for many years as you say. It will just get somewhat rusty after a decade or two if you don’t practice it at all. At least that has been my experience with German.
If you want to keep learning Czech, then that’s up to you. Language learning is an ongoing process. You can learn some Maltese, then that is good for learning in Malta. Starting in 2023, I will probably learn Maltese myself. I want to get through my Spanish, Italian and Korean first in 2021 and 2022.
2021: Spanish and Korean
2022: Italian and Korean