Haskell is an amazing language. I've only spent a brief amount of time with it, but I've seen what others can do with it, and I'm very impressed.

That said, I don't know that I'd recommend it to someone who has just started programming. I think that it'd be harder to appreciate it, since a lot of the rules that Haskell breaks / puts in place aren't things you've run into too often.

I'd recommend becoming at least relatively familiar with normal programming paradigms and then giving Haskell a go. It certainly deserves your time, but without proper appreciation of what exactly it does, I think its unforgiving nature could become discouraging.

edit: Of course, if you find normal paradigms boring / uninteresting, Haskell may be just the place for you. It's also really, really good for mathematic applications.