[zomgwtfbbq]

Depends of course on what you're trying to achieve. PHP is a very easy to learn language with an incredible amount of libraries and can be used for a variety of things. You can even call your scripts from a shell. Like already stated java is more than just a language for games, java is used in ATMs and lots of other devices that you use daily.

PHP can even bridge java classes or you can use the exec() function in order to execute them.

Java is a pain in the ass if you want to build GUIs (at least I suck at it and many with me). If you just want to use a server sided language you can start on PHP, when you get the hang of how to code classes you can always learn java later.