I just saw this insightful and touching video by John Green where he makes the connection between 'to gather' and 'together'. One could say "let's gather at the bus stop" for instance, causing the together-ness. In the comments, people started going into this and found that this is similar in their language as well.
- German: "zu sammeln" and "zusammen"
- Polish: "zbierać" and "zebranie/zbieranina"
- Dutch: "verzamelen" and "(te)samen"
- Greek: "Μαζί (mazi)" together, "μαζεύω (mazevo)" to gather
- French: 'to gather' = '(se) rassembler', 'together' = 'ensemble'
My question is, is there actually a connection between the words on a semantic level? Like the causation relation I propose above? Or is this simply an evolution of two different Indo-european stems?