English Translation
I am starting this evening.
Minor objection: I don’t see any reason to use ‘I am starting…’ instead of ‘I start…’
I am starting this evening.
Minor objection: I don’t see any reason to use ‘I am starting…’ instead of ‘I start…’
To my ear, “I start this evening” sounds less natural.
I have to disagree. Here is a link that explains the aspect of verbs.
The verb ‘start’ describes a point-like event in time with no duration. It is not an ongoing action so you have to use the simple aspect.
EDIT: However, you can say ‘I am starting to understand how the grammar in Finnish works’ because here you are referring to the process of learning Finnish which you have not finished (‘beginning’ would be better than ‘starting’ but that is beside the point). Finns often say things like ‘I am thinking that we should do this in a different way’ and it sounds really clumsy to me. It should be ‘I think…’
But here, “I’m starting” uses the present continuous for a planned future action.
2 We can use the present continuous for plans or arrangements
I’m playing football tomorrow.
Good point. I need to get the opinion of a native English speaker!