[silentbicycle]

You can experiment with some functional ideas in Python, though -- once you're familiar with basic Python, exploring the stuff you can do using higher-order functions is likely to be quite educational, with the caveat that (in that language) recursion will blow up on you when it gets too deeply nested.

So, while it doesn't really support FP fully, it's probably sufficient for basic FP from a pedagogical standpoint. (I also think it's one of the better candidates for a first programming language overall.)