Only together

Alleen samen krijgen we corona onder controle (Only together can we get corona under control). It is perhaps the most famous Dutch slogan of the moment. And there's already a lot to be said about the first two words of that slogan alone, especially if you include the West Germanic family members German, English and Frisian. Because samen you get further. Or should I write zamen ?

The press conference background in question, with the slogan 'Alleen samen krijgen we corona onder controle' ('Only together we can get corona under control')

Double meaning
If I type “alleen s” in Google, the whole sentence is already completed to “alleen samen krijgen we corona onder controle”. Of course, the whole idea of ​​a slogan is that it lingers so that it directs your thoughts, and that's what this slogan does. I guess that has a lot to do with the apparent contradiction of 'alleen samen' ('only together'). In the sense in which alleen is used here, it is not really a contradiction, but by putting alleen next to samen, that other meaning is primed in the linguistic part of your brain.
Within the context of my column 'West Germanic', there is a lot more to the word combination 'alleen samen'. To begin with, the 'prime trick' also works in Frisian and (more or less) in English, because allinne and only also have a double meaning. This is not the case in German, because there you translate the first word of the slogan with nur, while alleen in the meaning 'not accompanied' is translated with allein. Even more interesting than the word alleen, however, I find the word samen.

Google already completes the slogan when I have typed "alleen s"

Zamen
The West Germanic family member that most closely resembles samen is the German zusammen; that is in fact a literal equivalent of the somewhat outdated or formal tezamen. Would samen be an abbreviated form of tezamen? But why then do we write it with an s- and not as zamen? Let's look that up in the Etymological Dictionary of Dutch (EWN). That samen is an abbreviated form of tezamen seems to be partly true. The EWN says that samen was created by sticking te and samen together as tsamen, which was then simplified to samen. But the moment you merge te and samen, apparently samen already exists as a separate word. I can't find out exactly from the EWN what the ins and outs of that matter are, but I think the single word samen had a slightly different meaning before merging and simplifying.
The question about the spelling of samen with an s- instead of a z- is also answered by the EWN. In Middle Dutch (ca. 1200-1500) the s- “before a vowel is usually pronounced in a voiced way” – so you feel your vocal cords vibrate when you pronounce it – “and only in (Early) New Dutch usually written as z-. ” You can still see that today in tezamen and in other derivations of Middle Dutch samen, such as verzamelen 'collecting' and gezamenlijk 'together'. If samen would be a new word, or if the spelling were to be adjusted to the current pronunciation, we would indeed write zamen. But then the linguistic history would no longer be readable from it, as is now the case. Choices, choices.

To the same place
Under the lemma 'samen' the EWN also mentions a site from ca. 1100, in which 'tezamen' is written as zesamene, making the 'Dutch' word looks even more like the German zusammen. And it gets even better when I look in the Digitales Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache. In it, among the old German forms of zusammen, I find zesamene – how clear can the linguistic relationship get? Both the EWN and the DWDS refer to the Protogermanian word stem *sama- as the origin of the likewise Protogermanic *samana- 'together', from which the words samen, tezamen and zusammen originated. The original meaning of *samana- was probably 'to the same place'. Funny, because if you go to the same place and you do it at the same time, then of course you do it together. What both etymological dictionaries also mention, are a number of forms from the predecessors of contemporary Frisian and English: to samene, to semine and tosomne, tosamne. However, those words have died out, in favour of the words that are now common. In English you can still see the relationship with samen in the word same.

Tegader
In English you translate samen as together, which in turn looks a lot like an old Dutch synonym of samen that is referred to in dictionaries as 'written language', if included at all, and that is of course tegader. That word consists of the preposition te and the Middle Dutch noun gader 'connection'. In the same way together came into being: the Old English togædere "to be present in one place, in a group, in an accumulated mass" is a combination of to and gædere. The same will undoubtedly apply to tegearre, the Frisian word for together. For example, Frisian also knows the word gear in the meaning 'together', in Frisian a gathering is called a gearkomste and if you're assembling you are oan it gearkloftsje.
And precisely because there are many compositions (gearstallingen) with gear-, I was under the assumption that tegearre is thé Frisian word for together, but when I looked it up in the dictionary to be sure, I saw that that word is only used with two persons. If you want to indicate that more than two people are together, you should use mei-inoar ('with-another' or 'with-each other'). That distinction between two or more people was new to me, but then again I didn't start learning that language until I was 23 – well after my critical period. Inquiries with my wife, who, as a real Frisian, was raised with the Frisian language, yielded confirmation: you only use tegearre when it concerns two people. Alinne tegearre komme we fierder*.

*Only together we can progress.