C is quite (but not entirely) unlike Perl.

While I agree that C is a very useful language to have knowledge about, I disagree that C is unlike Perl. Perl is much more C than people think. I'd go even so far that without having some C knowledge, you will wonder why Perl does do certain things till the day you die. Learn C, if not to program in, then to make one a better Perl programmer. (If C is portable assembler, Perl is portable C).