Hi guys & gals!

I've spotted a couple of posts recently which refer to XNA. All I know about it is that it is a framework to allow PC and XBox games to be created. I wondered whether some of you who use this might be able to quickly answer maybe just a sentence or so for some simple questions to save me trawling through material on it please
  1. I get the impression DirectX is still live and well, and that this is a framework to allow .Net development upon DirectX. DO I have the right idea here?
  2. If both SDK's still exist, what#s the main advantage/are the main advantages of choosing one over the other please - why would you code using the XNA framework as opposed to the DirectX SDK?
  3. Finally 2 posts I read, albeit older ones (which prompted me to post here) mention this is only for C# developers??!?!! Is this true and if so, how on Earth is that possible as it would be a .Net framework IL option which surely would therefore be available to all .Net languages, no?
Thanks for your time