to be more specific it would help if you had said how much time you have to spend, and what you plan on using your skills on.
Personally to a beginner i would recomend C++ as this is a very widely used langauge, and is the back bones to a lot more langauges (example is java and C#).
C++ was my second ever langauge (i learnt VB6 first), buh C++ is a lot better trust me, it is very productive, good fun to beat and sets yourself a very good challenge!
PS. I was talking about the ANSI\ISO C++ not CLR, as CLR is just the .NET extension of C++.