"Dia mulai makan."
Translation:He starts to eat.
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So is there any progressive tense or anytime we translate to the infinitive in Duolingo, it can also be translated to the progressive? e.g., "He starts to eat" = "He starts eating" ?
This is indeed an English grammar issue. 1."He starts to eat." and 2."He starts eating." don't mean the same thing. 1. means he starts a certain action such as walking towards home, whereas 2. means he starts the action of eating. VincentCel correctly suggested to take another example "stop to~ vs ~ing". 3."He stopped to smoke." means he stopped walking to have a smoke, whereas 4."He stopped smoking." means he stopped the action of smoking. Therefore, this English translation is incorrect, it should be "He starts eating."
It won't let me reply, but for anyone who is interested: Memulai and mulai could both be used, but dimulai would mean "to be started". Adding di- prefix to a verb makes it a passive sentence structure, so the difference would be "I started the competition" = "saya mulai kompetisi" versus "the race was started by me" = "kompetisi dimulai oleh saya" Hope this helps!
