Pulling on the parallel to human languages I'd say c is the latin equivalent (except that c is still actively in usage). Basically, c was there first, you could and still can build anything in c and though its easier than x86 its full of pendantic features much like the latin case system. Also because c has been so successful its had a huge influence on just about every succeeding language - again much like latin. So I'd say learn c meets your requirements. Nonetheless, just learning c won't get you acquainted with many usefull features, just like knowing only english won't let you realize that common words like collegue or friend can carry gender connotations that automatically tell you if its a male or female friend/collegue (or that word order isn't important when your language has cases).

In that respect I think Java plays a role similar to say 18th and 19th century French - the post latin lingua franca. Java took a lot from c, but implemented many new concepts and design philosphies to programming and brought them to a wide audience. Although Java is kind of on the decline, and many other newer languages like Go push the envelope further, Java and java philosophies have still had a large influence on PHP, Ruby, Go, etc.

As far as what the english equivalent would be in this contrived metaphor... I'm unsure maybe we'll just have to wait, but in the meantime with c and java you shouldn't have a problem understanding just about any programming language currently in use.