What is the fastest way to learn Russian?!

[SoftRock]

I nativly speak CROATIAN,SERBIAN AND BOSNIAN (Slavic languages)!
But I want to learn Russian and i do know little,i know how to read words and pronounce them but i dont know meaning.
What is the best way to learn russian,what sources should i use to learn and what would be the fastest method of learning.
I want to go to Russian soon and i really need help!!!!

[LinguaPony]

Vladimir Skultety says in one of his videos that he listened to Russian radio for three months, 8 hours a day, and so he learned Russian. Like you, he had the huge advantage of being a native speaker of another Slavic language (Slovak). His Russian now is very nearly perfect.

[luke]

Fall in love with a Russian.

[reineke]

Kilo rakije, pa razvali!

[PeterMollenburg]

IF you're certain reincarnation is fact, leave it to another lifetime, then just work out how you can be born in Russia. Shouldn't be too hard, right?

[reineke]

I nativly speak CROATIAN,SERBIAN AND BOSNIAN (Slavic languages)!
But I want to learn Russian and i do know little,i know how to read words and pronounce them but i dont know meaning.
What is the best way to learn russian,what sources should i use to learn and what would be the fastest method of learning.
I want to go to Russian soon and i really need help!!!!

Eh.... on an English-language message board the majority of posters will not have a feeling for cases, grammatical gender or Slavic verb aspect. PeterMollenburg may indeed need to plan for a strategic reincarnation to learn Russian. Luke has chosen a more pleasant path. I'll add that for speakers of Slavic languages the greatest obstacle is the low level of mutual comprehensibility. If you don't get intimidated and keep listening , you should be pleased with your progress. Here in the language log area we have an FSI graduate who regularly posts a new list of unknown, "advanced" words. You shouldn't have to break a sweat with such vocabulary. Finally, in the resources section you will find a link to Paul Nation's free book about language learning and a list of Russian resources. Good luck.

[Cavesa]

Find a good quality coursebook with audio for Croatian/Serbian/Bosnian natives. Put in a lot of hours a day. And you are very likely to progress really fast. The course for a Croatian native is likely to skip a lot of stuff necessary for the English natives and to point out specific problems, like false friends. Plus, you should be able to add native media really soon.

[IronMike]

Move to a Russian city (not Moscow or St. Pete) and immerse yourself. The farther east the better.

[Daniel N.]

Focus on differences. Like, there's no verb 'to be'.

BCMS: ja sam student.
Russian: ja stud'ent.

Then, differences in pronouns. No short pronouns, different possessives. Different verb endings, but very similar verbs.

What you don't know you can guess by similarities of from context. Many words are spelled the same or almost the same, but pronounced a bit differently. Generally the spelling is more difficult. And so on.

There's a blog on the internet 'učimo ruski' or something like it.

[aquarius]

I think that we should not expect to much from reincarnation. I'im not an expert of this subject, but as far as I am aware, most Sriptures tell us that a 'good' reincarnation is not a gift you just have to receive or to ask for, but the result of intense work and of a long way someone has gone.

So if you are born in Russia, this might be because you've worked a lot on cases, grammatical gender and Slavic verb aspect in your previous life or in your previous lives. Maybe you have acquired such an amount of knowledge of and feeling for cases, grammatical gender or Slavic verb aspect, that all this accumulated energy one day wil materialize into in a reincarnation as a Russian.

I fear there is no way to circumvent work on Slavic grammar.

Personally, I've made the experience that it's a good way to establish links between the 'new' language I was learning, and other languages I knew yet, by finding out both similarities and differences.

Daniel N. hat yet talked about this.

When I startet to learn Polish (after having learnt a bit of Slovenian some years before), I began by comparing Slovenian and Polish declensions.