Best way to Learn Openings

Brand new to the game.  What is the best way to learn openings?

Choose an opening and start questioning every move you encounter in a line.Try to get a grasp on the strategic ideas that lie behind. This way you'll really understand the sequence and not just memorizing moves.  Moreover, you will know how to punish early mistakes made by your opponents.

Thanks. Do you have a recommendation for the first one to study?

A beginner should start studying open games (games that begin with 1. e4 and continue with 1..e5) or semi-open games, like the Sicilian family of openings. Following this route, you'll have to also study tactics a lot more, especially in the more crazy lines of the Sicilian. Better, try to study an opening with not so many branches, like the Scotch Game, which is still very playable (maybe a bit drawish for my taste, but the focus here is to understand the game, not to win at all costs). This is no guarantee it will work for everybody, but for me at least, the replay of annotated master games really helped. I had book with almost 300 games of Alexander Alekhine, commented by himself. The knowledge gained by passing through his thoughts and plans accounts for than 90% of my present skills. After you gain confidence in your play, you should also check hypermodern defenses, but it's going to take a while for that (but there's no hurry, is it?). All the best mate. 

The best way to learn openings is to learn a little bit about the general principles behind them -- try to control the center, develop your pieces in one move, develop pieces before moving a lot of pawns, etc. -- and then not really worry about them that much until you're a stronger player.  Most chess players (full disclosure, myself included) spend way too much time worrying about them when they should be worried about tactics and the other phases of the game.

Thanks I will get started. 

offbeat> Brand new to the game.  What is the best way to learn openings?

A silly thing newbies often do is memorize a bunch of lines, which may never appear at their level anyway! severIII encouraged working to understand the reason behind moves--that is a good approach. At the novice level it's also sufficient to familiarize yourself with the opening principles that almost always apply, and spend the rest of one's time on more important things like tactics. Whatever approach you choose, resist the temptation to spend most of your time on openings.

Good luck and have fun!