English Translation
Try to catch the ball.
why does putting “an-” in front of “fangen (to catch)” change the meaning to “to start (anfangen)?” are these related or just completely different words?
Welcome to the wonderful world of verb prefixes in the German language!
There are many common prefixes that can be attached to verbs to change their meaning, sometimes slightly, and sometimes drastically.
kommen = to come
ankommen = to arrive
entkommen = to escape
vorkommen = to appear
fangen = to catch
anfangen = to begin (to “catch on”)
umfangen = to surround
einfangen = to collect, to entrap
There are literally too many examples to list. The trickiest part of this is that many of these prefixes are “separable”, meaning that the prefix “detaches” from the main verb and gets thrown to the end of the sentence. This can make longer sentences very hard to parse, compared to English:
Wir fangen an. = We begin.
Wir fangen nächste Woche an. = We’re starting next week.
Have fun! 
1 Like
It’s worth noting that this happens a lot in English too (as with most languages in this family). In English, I believe these are known as “phrases verbs”, but in german, these are prefix verbs (which can be separable or inseparable, as Lernen_und_Fahren mentioned above).
In English, to ‘catch’ is not at all the same as to ‘catch on’ or to ‘catch up’. Sometimes they map to the same thing (like to give up / aufgeben or to clear up / aufklären), but most of the time they’re really different, and you’ll have to just learn a whole new set of combinations. Anfangen just happens to map to the meaning of the word to start.
It’s quite overwhelming as a beginner, but eventually the common it will start to click, as it did for you in English.
2 Likes