I moved to Podgorica from California in 2020. I recommend finding a private tutor who focuses first on conversational Serbian/Montenegrin (here, it is often referred to as "lokalni" to avoid nationalist political arguments) and at first avoids the grammatical complications. I studied Russian years ago, and that knowledge helped me greatly with the grammar, which is similar (as is much of the vocabulary). But for a native English speaker, the grammar can be daunting, and it's not a good place to start. Instead, learn enough to carry on basic conversations before diving into the grammar. Serbo-Croatian is categorized by the Foreign Service Institute Language Difficulty Rankings as a "Group Four" language, requiring 1,100 hours of study to master. https://www.atlasandboots.com/travel-bl … iculty/The good news is, unlike English, or even worse, French, the written language is entirely phonetic. Whereas, even the word "phonetic" isn't spelled phonetically (fonetikly?) in English!
