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. 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!
