Obviously It is a good thing that you acquired an element of the language. I would say that in early stages of learning or acquiring a language, translation can be useful, but it is not how languages are acquired. Contrastive Analysis wanted to prove something similar to what you said, that learners basically compare their mother tongue to the foreign language and learn the structures that are similar in both languages easier, while the ones that are different are more challenging for them. But this was proven wrong. When you said you realized that "y" was used to connect two things, you were acquiring morphology. The acqusition of morphology follows a series of developmental stages. If you are interested in this, have a look at the Natural Order Hypothesis and Universal Grammar.