Start with Machine Learning by Andrew Ng, on Coursera Once you get a hang of neural networks, which is chapter 4 in the course I think jump to Stanford's CS224n. It's helpful to complete Andrew's course as well.

http://web.stanford.edu/class/cs224n/

cs224n is not easy. Of course, you can learn NLP without deep learning, but today it makes sense to pursue this path. During the course of CS224n you'll get some project ideas as they discuss a ton of papers and the latest stuff.