Hello,
I've just started learning Russian by myself, mainly because i like the way it sounds.
So, I've been learning the alphabet, the adjectival endings in nominative case, the plurals, the present conjugation,
And then I starting to pay attention to pronunciation which is quite a nightmare (it's not phonetic), and I must say it's way harder than French.

I found that though these endings are spelled differently, they sound almost identical which frustrates me :(
for example красные and красный sound the same. Huh?
What's is the point of having different ending if they are pronounced very much alike?

As someone who started Russian from scratch about 4 years ago and after lengthy study at LingQ is quite comfortable in the language, let me share my experience with you.

As with most languages, at first there is a lot of confusion and a lot of sounds seem similar.
Russian is not a "what you see is what you say" language like Spanish, the spelling does not match the pronunciation all the time.
I would recommend avoiding being too analytical, whether it has to do with the grammar or the pronunciation.
If you focus on trying to understand the content, and listen and read a lot, and accumulate words and phrases by LingQing, the language will slowly start to seem more and more natural. Your ability to hear differences, pronounce the language, get the usage patterns correct etc. will all be a lot easier in a year than they are now.

And one of my cardinal rules in language learning is, never question the language.

artulito

These endings are in fact pronounced differently, and the difference between красные and красный can be easily catched by any Russian speaker. Though unstressed endings seem alike at first, with time you can develop a sense for them.

If you listen more to full texts (and not to examples of stand-alone words cut off from their context), you will gradually hear more difference between words with a common root and different endings.

Start Russian at LingQ, choose the content of _beginner_ level (which is read slowly and clearly) and try to listen real texts while reading them. I bet that after 30-40 hours of such listening your problem will much less bother you, and after 100 hours you'll forget about the problem.

Alphabet is enough to start listening and reading. You do not need any conjugation for understanding of the basic idea. Do not fill yourself with grammar prior to reading. Start reading first and learn grammar in parallel, but devote more time to listening and reading than to grammar. It would be of much help if your dictionary can reconstruct nominative form of a word from any case or tense, and http://lingvo.abbyyonline.com/en/ru-en/ can. If you enter "красные" into the input field, the program will suggest you "красный" - singular, nominative case, masculine gender. Press "красный", and you will see the translation. The dictionary has many russian comments, you'll learn to understand them with time (or you may ask on the forum). Russian words may have different meanings, but the meaning that has number 1 is really the most popular, and you can confidently choose it when translating beginner-level texts. The benefit of LingQ lessons is that you can always ask lesson authors on the "Ask Your Tutor" forum what one or another expression means, and you'll get an answer in Russian or English (as you like).

Thank you Steve, and Dmitri for your responses and suggestions. Yes, It will take some time to get used to the mechanic of the language. I guess I'll just start with the easy parts, then when I am already comfortable, to the harder parts. Russian does sounds challenging, do you have any suggestion on how to acquire a good pronunciation?

During first several months, don't think too much of your pronunciation. Try to imitate words which sound beautiful to you or bring you strong emotions, but don't expect excellence from yourself, just do it for pleasure. At first concentrate on beginner-level content. When you feel you know most basic words, you may listen to Russian songs along with reading text. This is fun and will help you overcome the boredom. With Russian songs and music you will learn faster.

Of course you may ask particular questions on the forum, and you may contact Russian tutors. If you become a paying member, you'll be able to have conversations with them. Tutors know by experience which sounds and words cause most problems to Russian learners. Conversations will help you to get answers to all your questions. But I don't urge you to waste big amounts of money, it is still possible to learn Russian not paying much, because the content library and forums are free.

Unfortunately, I'm not a Russian tutor myself, but you can search LingQ for tutors of your choice and write on their walls in case you have a particular question or you need to arrange time for LingQ conversation. It seems to me that one of the most experienced Russian tutors is Evgueny: http://www.lingq.com/profile/evgueny40/ . But if you post your questions on the forum, many Russians will be able to answer them.

... I meant, you may listen to Russian songs along with reading their lyrics. Site http://www.moskva.fm/ is an aggregator of 40 or so Moscow radio stations. It gives you online access to thousands of Russian songs, and their lyrics is also can be read from site. But you need to know basic Russian to be able to navigate this site. For example, this radio stations provides songs only in Russian: http://www.moskva.fm/stations/FM_105.7 When you select a song name which is next to time, you get a media player playing this song in a separate window. Once you run the player with the play button, click on "ТЕКСТ ПЕСНИ" tab, and you'll see the lyrics. The song may be slightly not from the beginning, because it's radio, not an album.