Hi,
I’ve tried duolingo for about 2 months straight and all I know how to say is rice, american, italian, english, water and some other useless stuff, it doesn’t even teach you to write or anything like that. It sucks.
I know the best way to learn a language is to go to a teacher or something, but I prefer not to do that and learn it online.
It will probably be harder for me since my native language is not english and I doubt there’s lessons or something online for mandarin in my native language, but I’m willing to try, I know english pretty well.
I am a teacher, but I teach Russians and Ukrainians English, so techniques might not translate 1 to 1, but I would suggest looking out for media and building a very basic vocabulary using a dictionary and translating the words to your native language. Then, once you’re comfy with a base, ditch the dictionary and get a chinese-only one - a dictionary where new chinese words are explained using simple chinese, so that you build up a habit of thinking in chinese eventually (this process will take a long while, possibly years). As for the base that you have to build up before that - can’t exactly say how much you’ll need. Look for media in chinese with english or native subtitles and try to listen to it multiple times, piecing together what stuff means. Additionally, try to look for pirated textbooks. IIRC chinese grammar is simple and elegant, but you still will have to learn it.