I am planning to start learning Persian. I speak Arabic, so I can vaguely read and recognize written Persian, but I do not understand the words. Think of it like German and English, you recognize the letters, and the words make sense, but the language/vocabulary/grammar is different.
For all intents and purposes, this is the first time I learn a language from scratch. I’ve started learning English at school since the first grade, and started consuming English media (TV shows, YouTube, etc. since I was 8 years old) and so I like to say that I learned English automatically, during the “critical period” in early adolesence.
Now, I am 24 and I would love to hear the advice of experienced veteran language learners on how to start learning a language from scratch.
Thank you.
The more lingqs you make, the more likely you will be able to learn news words. The more translations you make, the closer you are to learn those words that you have translated/lingq. You need to make Neuro connections for each word in order to learn them. You can only learn words that you have already made neuro connections to. The faster you get the idea, the stronger the connection will be. Happy hunting!
Besides the info you get here, I recommend you to look at videos by Steve Kaufmann at https://www.youtube.com/@Thelinguist
He has many good tips how to learn a new language with LingQ.
For what it’s worth, I started Persian on LingQ almost exactly two years ago. I didn’t even know how to distinguish the letters in a word or how to read them - I used Google extensively to learn the alphabet 
And, of course, I knew none of the Arabic loan words that I still often struggle to remember.
Today I am far from fluent or anything, but I feel like I have a good base of comprehension. You are starting from a far more comfortable starting point than me, so you will definitely get there. Trust the process, even if at first it seems overwhelming, like you’ll never remember all the words. You will, if you keep it up!
Use sentence mode & the broswer so you can use a mouse or macro app to
go to the next sentence
+translation
+audio in one click.
Read millions of words.