"If this is the case, then the question for those of us yet to make the transition to .NET is this: Which language should we study?"

Cecil,

PMFJI, but my personal advice is...both. The combined effort to learn both is still less than the time and effort to learn and master the framework (which is basically language independent). Doing so may give you more options down the road.

I've been working for two years in C#, and just recently started learning VB.NET.

Kevin