C is a bare-bones, straightforward, and clean programming language that forces you to do everything on your own. It will not hold your hand or prevent you from shooting yourself in the foot. However, it comes with everything you'll need to complete your task.
C++ is C with classes introduced, followed by a slew of other features, and then some more. It won't hold your hand for you, but it will let you to do so with add-on GC, RAII, and smart-pointers. If you want to accomplish something, there's a good chance you can utilise the template system to provide you a simple syntax for it. (This is especially true with C++0x). This complexity also gives you the ability to create a dozen copies of yourself and inadvertently shoot them all in the foot.
Microsoft's attempt to improve on C++ and Java is C#. There are a lot of syntactical features, but it's nowhere near as complicated as C++. It runs in a fully controlled environment, so you don't have to worry about memory management. It does allow you to "go dirty" and use unsafe code if necessary, but it is not the default and requires some effort to shoot oneself.