Struggling With Czech?

I have been in the Czech Republic around 18 months, I have taken Czech lessons and I watch Czech TV but I still struggle with Czech. Maybe I am getting a little long in the tooth to learn a new language but Czech is a tough nut to crack. I can understand reasonably well but cannot construct more than a simple sentence.

The Czech language is unlike English, French or even German - it has different roots. It's an unstructured language meaning that the word order doesn't necessarily matter but demanding a whole set of complex rules to ensure that, whatever the order of words, the meaning is clear. What am I talking about? Well, English requires you to construct a sentence in a specific way - there are clear grammatical rules to govern this and unless you follow them, your sentence will be meaningless. For example, I have to say "The cat is black" and not "Black is the cat" (sounding like Yoda here!). In this instance the meaning is OK but it is a simple sentence. In Czech, there isn't any sentence structure necessarily and so the focus is on how the words are constructed so that the hearer can determine object, subject, verb and so on....

Let me try an example...

To je stary muz - It is an old man

Vidim stareho Muze - I see an old man

Notice that not only did the spelling of the word 'man' change but also the spelling of the adjective 'old'..... This is called a 'case' and there are 7 of them in Czech each with a set of rules (and many exceptions hat simply need to be memorized).

And this is a language that has not one but two plural forms.... 2 through 5 is one plural and 5+ another. But again, the pluralization requires the adjectives being made plural too.....

Add to that that there are four 'sexes' to try to recall being neutral, female, male animate and male inanimate and you start to get a feel for the complexity of this rich language.

I want to speak Czech - I truly do but it is very difficult. There are many more words in the Czech language than in English (contrary to what you might think) and there are some sounds that are very difficult for an English lazy mouth to make...

For example the 'r' with an accent over it is pronounced 'rzge'. This is a difficult sound to get on it's own but in a word it is nigh on impossible. I always thought that the Slovaks were quite clever in that regard because they speak essentially the same language but did away with this sound.....

Anyway... it is a tough language but I will keep trying and trying to master at least a rudimentary form of it....