A line of LINQ looks and works nothing like a line of C#, and the difference is even worse in VB. Whether it's "part of the language" or not, it's a fundamentally different way of writing logic than the base language you're writing around it. I agree it's completely coupled with EF, but I hate EF too. (After you've used ActiveRecord for over 10 years, any other ORM just feels like a ball and chain, but that's another topic.)