Dividere and Condividere

By Sigrid Lee

What's the difference between dividere and condividere?

The short answer is that dividere means to "divide" and condividere means "to share." Dividere is a true cognate and is pretty obvious.

Davide doveva solo sposare Federica e dopo la sua morte,

Davide had only to marry Federica and after her death,

avremmo dovuto dividere l'eredità a metà.

we would have had to split the inheritance in two.

Captions 6-7, Il Commissario Manara - S2EP7 - Alta società
Play Caption

Condividere adds the prefix/preposition con (with), so that makes a certain amount of sense as well. To divide up something with someone.

Voglio... saluto con tanto affetto

I want to... I say farewell with great affection to

Ines, Laura, Sara, Enzo e Norbert

Ines, Laura, Sara, Enzo, and Norbert

per aver condiviso con me e la famiglia gran parte della mia vita.

for having shared with me and the family the greater part of my life.

Captions 25-27, Ennio Morricone - ''Io sono morto, vado via senza disturbare''
Play Caption

But with the verb "to share" in English, we also share information with someone. We don't keep it to ourselves. But we are not dividing it up. The same nuance exists in Italian.

Lei avrebbe dovuto condividere con me ogni scoperta,

You should have shared every discovery with me,

e invece non l'ha fatto.

but you didn't do that.

Caption 20, Il Commissario Manara - S1EP1 - Un delitto perfetto
Play Caption

Condividere also means to agree on something, to have the same opinion as someone else. Even in English, we can use the word "share." "I share (or I don't share) your view."

"Non condivido ciò che dici,

"I don't agree with what you say,

ma sarei disposto a dare la vita

but I would willingly give my life

affinché tu possa dirlo".

so that you could say it."

Captions 19-21, In giro per l'Italia - Mazara Del Vallo - Sicilia
Play Caption

But what is interesting is that if we do a search of the verb dividere in Yabla videos, we discover that it is often synonymous with condividere, or rather, there are plenty of cases where it means "to share." Sometimes, in order to share something, you have to divide it up, so using dividere can often be clear enough. If we look at the dictionary definition of dividere, "to share" is included. So we just have to keep in mind that a short answer isn't always good enough.

This question came up because, in a recent episode of Non è mai troppo tardi, we translated dividere as "to share," not "to divide."

The context: Alberto Manzi has become a TV personality, so people stop him on the street, and he is happy to talk to them and sign autographs. But his wife Ida is not so thrilled and she resents having to share him with so many other people.

Con quanti dobbiamo dividerti ancora?

With how many more do we have to share you?

Caption 70, Non è mai troppo tardi - EP 2
Play Caption

We can imagine a large pie to be divided up into slices. How big is Ida's slice of the pie? We can also note that she uses the preposition con. So it's pretty clear what she means. But do people also use con with condividere? Could she have said, Con quanti dobbiamo condividerti ancora? Probably, but it might have sounded a bit redundant and awkward. For sure, sometimes condividere and con are used together.

E quindi siamo partiti per una, circa, una quindicina di giorni

And so we left for fifteen days or so

e abbiamo vissuto in famiglia

and we stayed with families

e abbiamo praticamente condiviso con loro la loro vita quotidiana.

and we basically shared with them their daily life.

Captions 16-18, Professioni e mestieri - Erica - archeologa
Play Caption