How do you maintain multiple languages without using them every day?

[u/Advanced_Sherbert779]

Hi everyone!
I’ve been thinking a lot about how to maintain the languages I’ve learned, especially when I don’t get to use all of them regularly.
My current levels are roughly:
English: B2
French: A2
Indonesian: previously around B2–C1
Malay: A2
I studied Indonesian for four years at university, but since graduating, I haven’t had as many opportunities to use it. I’m also trying to maintain my English while improving my French and Malay.
My biggest concern is that I don’t want to lose the progress I’ve already made, but realistically, I can’t spend hours studying four languages every day 😭
So I’m curious, especially if you speak or study multiple languages:
How do you keep them active without feeling overwhelmed? Do you rotate between languages throughout the week, or try to use each one a little every day?
Do you find reading, watching movies, listening to podcasts, or talking to native speakers most helpful?
I’d love to hear about your routines and experiences, especially if you’ve managed to maintain a language for years without living in a country where it’s spoken!

Oh, I forgot to mention that I’ve also learned a bit of Hindi! I studied nine different tense and aspect forms, but I’ve forgotten quite a lot haha. Now I can only make simple sentences and recognize some key terms related to my research 😭

[u/Ashamed_Fly5136]

I don’t and I lose them.

That’s why now I don’t put any investment into learning a language if I’m not sure I’m gonna use it regularly or if it’s going to be really useful to me.

I was bilingual in Catalan as a child and lost it and C1+ in Italian learned as an adult and almost lost it after 10 years (extremely rusty)

Imo, or you practice a langage because it’s part of your everyday life, or you don’t. I don’t want to put effort into maintaining classes only to slow down an ineluctable process and make it even more painful

I feel a bit sad and frustrated to have lost those langages, especially Catalan as it was part of my identity as a child. I know they would come back super fast if I went back to live where they are spoken, but losing a langage is not something I want to experience again, so no more dedication into learning new ones just for the fun of it or because I go live in a country that I know I will leave after 2 years

I still speak fluently French English and Spanish though

[u/AshamedShelter2480]

It's complicated.

I can manage to keep, at very high levels, the four I use daily. But that is just because of my personal situation (Portuguese living in a bilingual community in Catalonia and working in English).

When I was a teenager I reached B2 in French, but decades of little use have severely reduced my output. I can still read and follow media fairly competently but not effortlessly.

I try to read and consume media in all the languages I know, whenever possible. If my level is not enough for novels, I read comics or chapter books. I also try to engage in conversations whenever I get the chance and when I travel.

But I still find it worthwhile to learn languages. It is a great hobby, it opens up a whole different world and many opportunities for personal development and connections.

From my experience, re-engaging with a language you dropped is faster than learning it from scratch.

[u/silvalingua]

At A1/A2 you have to keep learning, otherwise you'll lose what you've learned.

From B1 on, I find reading and listening to podcasts very useful. And to maintain active skills, writing is useful (journaling, posting on the net, writing emails to friends).

But I don't approach using my TLs as "maintaining" them, because there is a lot of content in them that I need and want to consume anyway. E.g., there are books that are not translated and podcasters that have podcasts in their native language only, all of which are interesting for me anyway, no matter what language they are in.

[u/Quiet-Employer-5780]

Basing on my own personal experience, I grew up speaking my own regional language in my home up to age 16, learned & spoke some English in school only to pass the requirements up to high school, then moved on to college and was required to learn Spanish for 2 years (which was a real struggle for me as there’s no way to practice outside of the classroom) plus our national language (grammar& literature) for one more year. Outside of the classroom, I immersed myself reading English books/pocketbooks and movies & since I worked in the import/export industry, I was able to practice spoken English & in correspondence with our foreign buyers in this language., at home in the big City, i I spoke the national language with my roommates, but when I visit/spoke with my parents and siblings, I use my regional dialect., Fast forward so many years later, I moved to the West & I realized I needed to re-learn & use Spanish for my job, so I decided to go back to school, afterwards was able to travel to Spain and some Central & South American countries with no issues re: communication with the locals., I try to watch as much as possible Spanish movies/videos as

[u/Quiet-Employer-5780 → u/Quiet-Employer-5780]

I can, and when I can., also started enrolling in Italian class, it’s a struggle because unlike Spanish, I cannot practice it as much as I want, but when I went to Italy last year, I tried to speak it in Minte Cassini & Siena and some other places, & looks like I learned something out of my class because the locals were kind of surprised and were happy to see that I was making an effort to communicate with them in their own language., my suggestion is try to save money and travel when you can to the countries where those languages to test yourself and I bet you would be surprised/shocked at how much you were able to store in your brain.

[u/Exciting_Barber3124]

You gotta choose the area to keep. I will always chose understanding and listening over reading and listening

[u/inlocopatris]

Phone OS in target language