If you know Turkish (or any Central Asian language barring Tajik[not familiar with Persian adjacent languages]), learning Japanese is a breeze because you can translate a Turkish text into Japanese word for word and out comes a perfectly constructed Japanese text. Obviously, it works in the other direction as well.
I remember trying to learn Japanese through Russian and having hell of a time untill I came across a Japanese textbook written in Turkish.
If you are from Central Asia, you can leverage both of your languages (native Central Asian & Russian) for learning English. It's better to learn English through Russian untill it's time to learn the English tense system at which point you can swith back to your native Central Asian as Russian is not very amenable for learning the English tense system whereas the tenses(rather aspects?) of C.A. languages line up with that of English in almost one to one manner. Thinking about the English tenses through the "Russian mind" was a nightmare untill I realized I already know the tenses through my native Kazakh.
Mathematicians never shy away from throwing everything at their disposal at a problem. Acting like them speeds up language acquisition process considerably.
I remember trying to learn Japanese through Russian and having hell of a time untill I came across a Japanese textbook written in Turkish.
If you are from Central Asia, you can leverage both of your languages (native Central Asian & Russian) for learning English. It's better to learn English through Russian untill it's time to learn the English tense system at which point you can swith back to your native Central Asian as Russian is not very amenable for learning the English tense system whereas the tenses(rather aspects?) of C.A. languages line up with that of English in almost one to one manner. Thinking about the English tenses through the "Russian mind" was a nightmare untill I realized I already know the tenses through my native Kazakh.
Mathematicians never shy away from throwing everything at their disposal at a problem. Acting like them speeds up language acquisition process considerably.