Are you sure C is simpler then ML? If you really get into the nitty gritty details (which is what you do when interacting with programming language theory), the definition of the lambda calculus fits in a single page and an ML-lite that is powerful enough for real programming is just a little larger than that.
On the other hand, C needs a manual with hundreds of pages and has lots of dark corners and undefined behaviour. IMO, if you really want to keep things simple you need to stick to assembly language instead of C.
You think that assembly needs less of a manual than C? You think assembly has less dark corners? You think it's going to make things simpler? My mind boggles.
Oh, and also, which assembler? 68000? x86? ARM? (One of these is not like the others in terms of complexity...)
Maybe talking about undefined behavior wasn't the best approach I could take :) But if you stick to simple machine languages then it shouldn't be a big problem. Something that is closer to Knuth's MIX than to x86 won't have much undefined behavior.
The thing that I was thinking about was that many operations that are defined in assembly language, such as integer overflow are undefined in C (and this undefined behavior is often abused by optimizing compilers) and C also abstracts over a lot of control flow conventions.
On the other hand, C needs a manual with hundreds of pages and has lots of dark corners and undefined behaviour. IMO, if you really want to keep things simple you need to stick to assembly language instead of C.