I learned C as my first language and suggest it as first language. And I think it is relatively small language, (discounting all the different details open to implementation not covered in the spec).

One thing I would miss as a beginner is repl. Because, that is how I later learned bash with constant feedback and constantly tweaking the input code until the computer stops swearing at you. Also, it was really fun way to learn language, one small piece at a time. Other than that, I do not consider C to be a particularly hard language.

But, if your goal is to learn a language with modern OOP design, then you should go for python or ruby IMHO. It is much better than Java, (even to do anything you have to create a class with main with so many modifiers). I think that would the reason to learn python, because structuring the code is archaic or at least different from how other mainstream languages in C and can be a hurdle for newbie who want to scale up their programs.

I think good about python is being simple and also having features that are mainstream that translates various other mainstream languages. But, should I care about that as a newbie is an entirely different thing.

Edit : Added a comment regarding OOP