Kilo Lingo

Line drawing of kundividi
Coloured illustration of kundividi
#2293 of 5,000 Core 5000

Translation

to share with someone, to have jointly

Word origin

Built inside Esperanto from the preposition kun (with) and dividi (to divide). The second half is Latin dividere, to force apart, and the compound turns a word about separating into a word about togetherness, which is the whole trick.

Origin
Esperanto (kun + dividi), on Latin dividere
Root
dividere
English cognates
divide, individual, device

Grammar

Verb typeregular (Esperanto has no irregular verbs)

Irregular verb. A full conjugation table for irregular verbs is coming soon. For now, use a reference like Wordreference or RAE.

Examples

.

We shared the bread between us.

?

Do you want to share the room with me?

.

They share every joy and every sorrow.

Decoded: plus dividi. Both pieces are already yours - at rank 19, at 1,240 - and this is one of the neatest compounds in the language, because the two halves pull in opposite directions and the result is exactly right. is to divide, to split, to force apart. Put on the front and the splitting becomes joint: you divide it with someone, which is sharing. English does the same job with an unrelated word and loses the picture.

Prepositions compound freely, and this is the pattern. - is not an affix, it is the ordinary preposition used as the first root of a compound, and Esperanto lets you do that with most of them. Kunlabori is to collaborate, kunveni to assemble, kunsidi to sit in session, kunporti to bring along, kunsento sympathy. The same freedom gives , elpreni, trairi, superforti. Once you notice it, a large slice of the vocabulary stops needing to be memorised.

alone is not enough. A learner reaching for "share" often writes , and that means to cut the bread up - the focus is the division, not the company. is the sharing. The difference matters most in the figurative uses: opinion is to hold a view in common with someone, and opinion would be to split one. For the online sense of sharing - posting a link onward - Esperanto normally says i, i or simply kunhavigi, and there is an English calque you can avoid.

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Esperanto · Free printables

kundividi: worksheet, infographic and listicle

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This word is part of lesson 46.