As a newbie, is it still worth to learn perl 5, or should I wait and jump right into perl 6 directly from the beginning?
This implies to me that you only have X units of either storage capacity or time that can be allocated to the learning of a language. You will soon learn that there is always something new.

It is my perception that once you learn how to program, picking up another language is all the same concepts with different syntax.

That was until I tried to learn another language recently and realized once again that I love perl because it does what I want and other languages were very strict in adhering to their styles. So maybe perl would not be a good start :-)

I expect if you learn perl 5 it will only make it easier to pickup perl 6. Learn perl 5. You're always learning new things, and perl 6 will just be a continuation of that. If programming is really that new to you, you won't be far enough along to feel a drastic change when 6 comes along anyway. I mean that in all the best ways too.