[Vietnamese language] Some reflections on the derivation and deviation of meanings: The cases of 'tiêu thụ' and 'tiêu phí'

In Vietnamese, there are quite a few words which feature a practical meaning which is deviated and derived from their original one, and they are always of the kind of Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary. Here are two typical examples for this: ‘tiêu thụ’ and ‘tiêu phí’.

1.

‘Tiêu thụ’ originally means ‘to sell’ in the Sino-Vietnamese category. However, it does mean  ‘to consume’ which I guess is derived from its original usage because of the characteristic of auxiliary-free passive expression in Vietnamese (that is, the expression without some words like ‘bị’, ‘được’). To be exact, when saying "món hàng này tiêu thụ rất chạy" (in which "tiêu thụ" takes its original meaning), that sentence is also linguistically mentally understood as ‘món hàng này ĐƯỢC tiêu thụ rất chạy [bởi người ta]’ (illustrated in the style of Western grammatical expression for some clarity), as we can see in some sentences like

‘Cái này mua rồi’ (understood as ‘Cái này được mua rồi’),

or ‘Nhà xây xong rồi’ (understood as ‘Nhà được xây xong rồi’).

Derived from that mentally understanding is the second meaning of ‘tiêu thụ’ (‘to consume’). So I think this compound word has two meanings which are equally employed in modern Vietnamese.

2. 

As regards ‘tiêu phí’, its original Sino-Vietnamese meaning is ‘to consume’, yet in modern Vietnamese it means ‘to waste’. This deviation from its original meaning takes some resemblance to the one of the compound ‘cứu cánh’, as people solely rely on one of two words in a compound to infer arbitrarily the meaning of that compound, which I temporarily call ‘unit-induced deviation of meaning’. In the compound ‘cứu cánh’, the meaning of the first word ‘cứu’ is associated with the meaning ‘to save’ as in ‘cứu vớt’, so the whole compound’s meaning is often mistaken as this meaning.

By the somewhat same token, ‘tiêu phí’ contains ‘phí’ (meaning ‘to waste’), yet it also contains ‘tiêu’ (meaning ‘to spend’), so as combined, the compound is sensibly taken as ‘to spend wastefully’. Hence, those two meanings of ‘tiêu phí’ should be accepted as in this case, different from the case of ‘cứu cánh’, both words are taken into account, not only one of two. (In the same manner of semantic derivation, the word ‘consume’ also means ‘squander’.)

Besides, as looking up ‘tiêu phí’ in two of the most magisterial Vietnamese dictionaries (‘Từ điển Việt-Nam’ by ‘Thanh-Nghị’ and ‘Hán-Việt từ điển' by Đào Duy Anh, I’ve found a bit difference between explanations of this word, respectively as follows:

TIÊU-PHÍ dt. Đem tiền bạc của cải dùng vào một việc gì. Dépenser. (To spend money on something.)

Tiêu phí 消費 Dùng của cải sản-vật hết đi, trái với sinh-sản (consommer).

Regarding this difference, I think the derivation of meaning in Thanh-Nghị is quite sensible (which means ‘dépenser’ in French – meaning ‘to spend’). To sum up, its meaning derives from ‘to consume’ to ‘to spend’ which in turn is shifted to ‘to spend wastefully’ as understood popularly nowadays. Among three meanings of this word, the latter two I think are more broadly embraced in modern Vietnamese than the original one.