[RightMillennial]

I took German back in high school but I don't really remember anything about it. How can you read if you don't at least have an idea of what each word or phrase means? I'm a native born English speaker, and I occasionally have to look up English words if I have no idea what they're supposed to mean. It's one thing if it's an obvious random word for a gadget such as doohickey. I can't imagine reading a foreign language and surmising what a word means without a definition.

[Baeocystin]

I won't say it's easy, but it's easier than you might think.

Word use follows a power law distribution in all languages ( Zipf's Law, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCn8zs912OE is an excellent vsauce cover of the subject ), but the short of it is that within a relatively short amount of time spent studying you'll be able to pick out common words and build from there, even if you started from zero.

[the_duke]

When I learn a new language I always start with learning the 1000 most used words without reading much/any text.

Knowing those will usually get your comprehension to a surprisingly high level. You can start filling in the gaps from there.

[bayesian_horse]

That's why I propose a two-phased strategy where the first phase is dominated by drilling and the second phase is dominated by reading and immersing.

[ramblerman]

lingq is a great resource to consume lots of content in foreign languages at the right level.