Why say “son of father and son of father” but not “son of father and son of father”?
“Children of fathers” is a commonly used idiom, translated into English as “Born with a silver spoon in your mouth”. This sentence refers to the descendants of powerful people in society. People who belong to the category of “sons and grandchildren” are always favored in study, job promotion, and career than others.
This idiom is also referred to as COCC by young people with a playful and entertaining nuance. However, why say “father’s son and grandson” but not “father’s son and grandson” is still a mystery to many people.
First, in terms of history, from the end of the nineteenth century, the French introduced a law to protect priests who preached in Vietnam. Eating according to Western sects is the appearance of priests in villages and hamlets in Vietnam. These people work for the French, are trusted by the French, and endowed with many powers. Therefore, the vicar automatically became the “little mandarins” in the locality.
These priests do not have wives and children, but have many relatives who call them “uncle”, “uncle”. Thus, a generation of “grandchildren” was formed, leaving behind the expression “children of fathers and children” that we are using in everyday speech.
Illustrated photo.
In addition, in French, there is also the word “népotisme” which refers to the fact that some old popes in Europe because of their kinship abused their power to give many privileges to their grandchildren. This is not a good tradition, but it accidentally enriches the treasure of Vietnamese folk idioms.
Next, in terms of semantics, if we say “his father’s children” then it is obvious, which children are not his father’s, which are not his grandfather’s. This expression would be superfluous and would not contain much deeper meaning.
When we say “father’s son”, we will see two clear groups: Group 1 is “grandfather” and “father” representing power; group 2 is “son” and “grandchild” represents the lineage of the powerful family. Although this inversion is illogical, it creates a layer of meanings that represent irregularities, inequality and excessive priority for the descendants of influential people in society.
In addition, this way of saying is a linguistic phenomenon, we can easily come across many idioms with similar structure. Such as: “Butterflies are bored with bees”, “high running away”, “headaches and headaches”, “flies and ants perched”,… The illogical inversion from compound word pairs helps to emphasize the implied thing and creates an informal way of speaking. That is also the law of forming symbolic meanings of 4-syllable idioms.
In short, when receiving an idiom or proverb, we should understand it in a symbolic or metaphorical sense, not in a rigid way.
at Blogtuan.info – Source: Afamily.vn – Read the original article here
