Parlez vous die Deutsch?

You cannot start learning a foreign language unless you know what linguistic skill you want to acquire, what topics you want to cover in the language, for what purpose, and how keen you are. Language learning splits fairly clearly into eight main skills: listening, speaking, reading, writing, translating (either way), interpreting (either way). The last two are professional skills when practised from foreign to native language; but they are also socially useful at quite an elementary level to help friends or for occasional business.