I'm interested in learning the Russian language. Can anyone recommend a home-study course, such as the one that http://www.rosettastone.com offers? Also, are there significant differences in dialect in the former SSR's, such as Ukraine, Estonia, etc?

I've been teaching myself the language using websights such as listen2russian.com and masterrussian.com.

I believe there are many dialects of russian, with a common or 'Moscow russian' being spoken most often.

Get the Pimsleur CD's at www.lingoshop.com

Thanks Fur and Kievsky, those look like good sites.

Tsar Nicholas--gone but not forgotten.

You can get Russian language tapes from your local library and make copies. I like to listen to vocabulary tapes as I drive to work. Pimslaur is great for learning phrases. They build sentences one word at a time. Nothing written down, all listening and repeating. Rosetta Stone is pricy. You can find lots of used tapes/CD's on Amazon.com. Ukrainian is spoken in western Ukraine, a similar language but distinct from Russian. Good luck with your studies, I'm sure you'll be well rewarded.

I'm interested in learning the Russian language. Can anyone recommend a home-study course, such as the one that http://www.rosettastone.com offers? Also, are there significant differences in dialect in the former SSR's, such as Ukraine, Estonia, etc?

You should know that :
"Estonian (eesti keel (help·info); pronounced [ˈeːsti ˈkeːl]) is the official language of Estonia, spoken by about 1.1 million people in Estonia and tens of thousands in various émigré communities. It is a Finno-Ugric language and is closely related to Finnish."

"Ukrainian (украї́нська мо́ва, ukrayins'ka mova, [ukrɑ'jinʲsʲkɑ ˈmɔʋɑ]) is a language of the East Slavic subgroup of the Slavic languages. It is the official state language of Ukraine. Written Ukrainian uses a Cyrillic alphabet. The language shares some vocabulary with the languages of the neighboring Slavic nations, most notably with Polish, Slovak, Serbian and Russian.'

and so on.

You should know that:

"Ukrainian (украї́нська мо́ва, ukrayins'ka mova, [ukrɑ'jinʲsʲkɑ ˈmɔʋɑ]) is a language of the East Slavic subgroup of the Slavic languages. It is the official state language of Ukraine. Written Ukrainian uses a Cyrillic alphabet. The language shares some vocabulary with the languages of the neighboring Slavic nations, most notably with Polish, Slovak, Serbian and Russian."

"Estonian (eesti keel (help·info); pronounced [ˈeːsti ˈkeːl]) is the official language of Estonia, spoken by about 1.1 million people in Estonia and tens of thousands in various émigré communities. It is a Finno-Ugric language and is closely related to Finnish."

and so on.

This might help you a bit. Russian. (http://home.unilang.org/wiki3/index.php/Russian)

This as well. (http://www.mylanguageexchange.com/Learn-Languages.asp)