I think a good way to handle that is to ask them what they want to end up building. Want to make Android apps? Java. Want to make the front end part of web pages? HTML, CSS, JS with some preprocessors and libraries. Want to work on the back end? Ruby or Javascript/Node or one of the others.

Treehouse's learning tracks (https://teamtreehouse.com/tracks) are useful for a beginner to look through to get a general idea of what that would involve.