Three consonants carry one idea: things or people coming together. The same root that gives you a friend gives you the verb to connect, the noun for a company, the syntax that joins words into sentences, and the notebook where pages are bound. A friend is simply someone joined to you. Once you see that thread, you stop memorizing a dozen separate words: they are the same three letters seen from different angles. Every word here 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 active sense splits cleanly: pa'al (לַחֲבֹר) is two parties allying as equals, pi'el (לְחַבֵּר) is one hand connecting two things, and hitpa'el (לְהִתְחַבֵּר) folds the action back on the subject, joining oneself, bonding, or in modern Hebrew logging on to a network. The passive partners nif'al, pu'al and huf'al are not lexicalized for this root, which is normal: no 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.