I never understood how you couldn't focus on its "C roots", which are coincidentally also its core semantics (give or take). Why shouldn't one focus on that? I

I never understood how you couldn't focus on its "C roots", which are coincidentally also its core semantics (give or take). Why shouldn't one focus on that? I could agree that C++ has many constructs that allow one to get away without slightly advanced programming that would be needed when coding in C, but recommending that one shouldn't need to understand function is a bit much.