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It's kind of comparing apples to oranges because java is a full blown high level programming language and php is basically a scripting language that is aimed at doing web stuff, although there is a lot of other stuff you can do with it.
PHP is pretty simple, it plays well with mysql and is pretty fast for most things you want to do with it. I use it for a whole bunch of things, but I also use perl for a lot of things because it is more flexible for a wider range of stuff (eg server admin stuff) and because I like to run things from the command line (although php also has a command line version).
Java is very powerful but you are looking at having a whole bunch more to learn, and every java app I've seen has been a bit clunky for whatever reason. If you really need to make a blazingly fast app then I'd use C.
If you are looking for a first language to learn then PHP is a good one, it is very "clean" to learn and write and you can do a hell of lot of cool stuff with it. Once you are used to the act of programming and especially programming theory (from more complicated languages) then it is pretty easy to learn any language, you just have to adapt to the new syntax and adapt what you already know to the new system.
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