It may be heresy to say it, but I think Duolingo does a good job of teaching you the main function words (in, at, of, did, will do, can do, …) and some basic content words (I, they, mother, father, person, eat, walk, …)
That helps me feel a bit better about not being able to read or understand most of the words: at least I understand the “framework” of the sentence to some extent! Of course, I’m still a beginner at Chinese myself.
It’s also entirely possible to start from 0 and simply LingQ everything. You’ll eventually remember and learn the most common words, etc. I have been doing this with Persian: when I started on LingQ, I couldn’t even read the alphabet. But that requires confidence that it’s possible, because it can be very overwhelming! In that case, Google, Youtube, Wiktionary and Wikipedia are your friends, to help you understand how to read the pinyin etc.