I think it's a very poor idea to start off with a compiled language - it adds a level of unnecessary difficulty for the beginner.

Nothing beats sitting in the command line, playing with the constructs of the language, to get a feel for it.

Python is a great first language; Javascript is less elegant, but very widely used, and quite simple, that'd be OK too. C is not a good choice - why should some poor beginner have to learn about manual memory management?