Learning Russian

I've wanted to learn Russian, but have been scared away (so far) by the (apparent) difficulties, especially pronunciation and grammar. Has anyone (especially English speakers) had success studying it? (Or a similar Slavic language.)

If so, can you study it like the antimoon folks recommend--lot's of 'comprehensible input' (listening and reading), and little or no overt grammar study? Or does this only work for languages like English or Swedish which have less complicated grammars?

My impression, from my little experience with Russian, is that it is relatively simple to learn at an effective reading level, it's only when it comes to speaking does it get a little complicated.

Other thoughts.

I have no experience, but I can see that the declension tables aren't that bad. They're just more than German declensions and French conjugations combined... by input I refer to the need to get used to the word forms (chiefly declensions in your case), while paying attention to exceptions (exceptions prove the rule) which often outnumber rules. I'd treat exceptions as new vocab, i.e. to consider them separate words.

Don't be afraid of it, I'm a native English speaker and I've been learning Russian for about 4 years now and I am fairly competent. I found it to be no more difficult that French in the long run (if it seems bad at the beginning, just keep at it)... Now it turns out I can speak it better than French too.

I speak Russian as good as native and it is difficult with declensions for sure, there are some difficulties with conjugation also. but it is much more easier with Tenses in comparison with other european languages because you can use for talking just 4 Tenses, no continuous Tenses, no perfect meaning Tenses, no Future in the Past meanings :) so it is not that difficult as it may seem

Hello!
I live in Russia. I'm student.
I learn English and wanna to chat with native-speaker.
My mail prizrak.87@mail.ru

What about handling the pronunciation--both in listening and speaking? To quote a well-know polyglot, who otherwise has had little trouble with other languages:

"The problem is remembering the words. The person who came up with Russian words for things was probably eating lunch at the time. I have never come across such an overdose of consonants to say even the most basic thing."

Didn't you find that a problem when learning Russian?

I find Russian words are very easy to learn once you get used to them. The are a lot more unique than words in other languages, that is, there are practically no words which have the same pronunciation in the whole language. This makes it easy to not get mixed up and to make oneself understood.

What I find really annoying are those series of prefixed verbs like idti, proidti, naidti, otoidti, poidti and so on... I can't treat them as different words and I keep mixing them.

Learn Russian because its speakers excelled in Science technolgy unlike other languages that are just good for entertainment and not for practical purposes.