> It was the same thing with Clojure and Scala for the JVM. I have zero interest in first learning C# or Java, just to use those platforms.

FWIW, I managed to learn Clojure without knowing anything from Java/JVM before diving into it. I did have plenty of JS experience which made ClojureScript easier to pick up I suppose, but Java works more or less the same as every other Algol-like and/or OOP language out there so if you have any previous experience with something like that, basic Java is trivial to pick up even accidentally.