Hi, Brun Ugle tricked me into becoming the Fairy Godmother of this group, so here I am
I feel partially responsible for this disaster that is spreading here, as I simply couldn't keep my mouth shut about the good quality of Czech fantasy writers, the huge book market for a language of this size, and perhaps even a few movies, and about some excellent Czech based resources for learning other languages. Pretty funny, considering the fact I am quite the opposite of a patriot.
A few comforting words to make the start a bit less painful:
-Czech truly is a useful language for people traveling to the country. Most Czechs, even the young ones, are bad at English. Sure, the university educated people with longer stays abroad in their history speak quite well, but that is just my social bubble. Computer game players tend to know English quite well too, and a few other groups. The overall "B1" of everyone with high school education is just a fairy tale the ministry employees tell each other. But this time, the problem is actually an advantage. A1/A2 Czech can already make your stay more pleasant and less complicated. B1 will already make you kings and queens of the company. The french won't be impressed by B1 knowledge of their langauge, the czechs would nominate you for a Nobel Prize for it, if they could. Add to it that services in the Czech Republic are very cheap due to horribly low salaries (goods are not cheap), so it is a very cheap place for tourists, therefore you may be able to afford travelling to the Czech Republic more often than to some more exotic destinations or to the hyperexpensive scandinavian countries. And it is a very safe and tolerant country. The worst criminals you are likely to encounter are the taxi drivers. And even those rob everyone the same, no discrimination.
-The grammar may seem complicated at first. But it is in many ways similar to German or Latin, so there is no need to be that much more scared of Czech than of those two. And hey, you could have been tricked into Korean, Ancient Egyptian, or Klingon instead, you were still lucky. Thank Brun Ugle. And there are lots of loan words, Czech isn't some alien isolated beast.
-Don't worry about the so called "diglossia" much. What some people make up to seem an infernal problem typical of the Czech language, is in reality nothing more serious than the differences between spoken and standard English, spoken and standard French, spoken and standard Spanish. And the regional differences are still not as hard to get used to as to some of the regional differences between English natives or Spanish natives. Really, no need to panic. Speak either standard or whatever region based way you want, we'll understand. And you'll get to understand everything you need with exposure, no problem there.
-I think a lot of the Czech media is not region locked online, perhaps the providers simply don't suspect foreigners of wanting to access that
And the Czech pirated content is huge, as we are still considered second rate customers and the industry is pushing us to it. The downside is, that if you are strongly against piracy, you'll be doomed to acquire your native input resources just as unpractically as we are supposed to, plus more delivery fees.
-A short motivational list of the native languages of various people talking very good Czech that I've heard: English, French, Spanish, Russian, Arabic, Ukrainian, Italian, Vietnamese. I am sure I am not remembering all of them right now. So, if they could learn it, why couldn't you?