One root, two faces that turn out to be one. In the simple binyan ס־פ־ר means to count; intensify it and the same letters mean to tell a story. Counting and recounting are the same gesture: laying things out one after another, in order. From that single idea Hebrew grows the number, the digit, the count, the story, the book, the writer, the library, and literature itself. As a bonus, the same root runs the barbershop, where the hairdresser "goes over" the hair the way a scribe goes over a text. Every word below is verified against pealim, niqqud included.
The same root runs through the verb system. Each binyan is a voice: it bends the one idea into active, passive, causative or reciprocal. Tap to hear.
The passive nif'al covers "to be counted". The intensive pi'el is where the meaning forks from counting to telling, and oddly also to cutting hair (the barber "goes over" the head). The causative hif'il and the passive partners pu'al / huf'al are not lexicalized for this root, which is normal: not every root fills all seven binyanim.
Same root letters, different noun moulds (mishkalim). The mould tells you the function: who does it, the act of doing it, or the thing produced.
Strip the prefixes, suffixes and vowels. Three consonants remain, and the meaning lives there.