No - do not learn VB if you don't already know it. It won't help you and may even confuse you because of similarities/differences. It is the same with human languages - learning two similar languages at the same time is a bad idea.
Moreover, BS does not originate from VB - they have common roots, the BASIC language - and they have added extensions, like dynamic variable typing ("variant" in VB), dictionaries etc. But other things in B/S - like having only local variables (no globals and avoiding altogether the argument of lexical vs dynamic scope), the way "m." is used as self for object programming - those i haven't seen anywhere else and i know at least a dozen other programming languages to some degree.
I think you should take BrightScript as-is; it's quirky but usable. Most quirks are in the components (under)implementations, which are separate from the language.
