What is language? It's just a tool to solve your problem. It's like asking what pencils or colors to use for drawings. I mean its up to the artist. It depends on what you're going to make. What you need for your purpose.

Same for programming language. To choose a language you need to address what problem do you wanna solve. What are your needs and which language serves your needs better than other.  Though below points can be taken in consider for choosing language.

C

Many of us start with C. It is a good choice. But if you're lazy and don't want to write almost everything on your own from scratch then probably not a good choice. Syntax level is difficult but matter of practice only. Less compile time. Close to machine language. 

Java

Multipurpose High Level language. Object Oriented Language. Syntax is quite similar to C. But the scope of this language is very much. It is robust and works on many devices. It's OS independent cause java runs on it's own virtual machine called JVM. So java will execute on any device having JVM.

It has so many applications. In Web, Desktop, Small devices and more. Java is secured. It doesn't have the pointers though. It has feature to collect garbage automatically. There's not much thing that you can't do in java.

PHP

It is an web based language. Made specially for web developing. Easy syntax, rapid development of web applications.

If anyone wants to aim for web developing only then PHP is a good choice. It has good user community. PHP is open source, easy to pick up for beginners.

Python

For all the new comer who doesn't want to take the pain of syntax complexity. Then Python is for them to begin with. It has syntax sugar coating. Python is an general purpose programming language too.

If your target it AI or Data Science or automation of things then python is a way good choice. Python has famous frameworks like django, flusk for all the web developer. For scalable large project django is a good choice. Open source and an amazing user community makes it more lucrative for developer.

So, what language? No one can say for sure depends on your need.