My sons make trouble, and I can’t help it.
The translation says “I can’t help it” means I couldn’t control the kids
But I’ve never heard of anyone saying can’t help it when they refer to other people.
Thought can’t help it means you couldn’t control yourself. Like I can’t help laughing.
If I were to say something like that I might say
My sons make trouble, and there’s just nothing I could do to stop them/ they’re unstoppable
Can we say I can’t help it when we mean I can’t control others?
It’s in their textbook and I’d like to write to the publisher to clear this up.
So you do agree that “ I can’t help it” could only mean you can’t control yourself
You can’t use that when you’re talking about others?
Coz I think I’m gonna need more backup if I want them to change the content…
If anyone else has any thoughts plz comment here
I need more ammo here
They do point out one example, you could say “I can’t help it if they make trouble.”
Your example still seems off though. Maybe you would say it if your emphasis is on your inability to meet your responsibility to control them. The more I think about it that way, the more I think it’s not quite wrong, if a bit unusual.
Now that you mentioned it I think you’re right.
“I can’t help it if they make trouble.”
^ Sounds okay to me.
But yeah the original sentence is so awkward.
I wouldn’t want to teach my kids to speak awkward English and I wouldn’t want to do that to my students either
Thought the goal of learning a foreign language is to speak like the natives and avoid awkwardness when talking
I mean I’ve seen a lot of grammatically correct but awkward sentences from school materials
But it seems like if it’s grammatically correct then it’s acceptable here and they don’t accept otherwise
I’ll try my best
I don’t think a lot of Americans would use a sentence like that and I believe an ESL student should avoid this kind of error
Thanks for the help and salute to your google skills
I’ve been googling it but I just couldn’t find the articles I needed
How do you do that?
I regoogled it and try to find out what the problem is
My first result: Help! I can’t stop eating sponges!
That’s probably why…
But why… why Sponges…
Anyways I think the first time I used “can’t help it” with “dictionary”
And that’s why I skipped this article I guess
No dictionary specifies the usage of can’t help it tho
Explains the meaning but says nothing about the usage
I agree with you and @tempogain. I also find “I can’t help it” a bit awkward here, at least with the current sentence structure. I’m not entirely sure it’s wrong as such, but my first thought was that I’d probably change it if I was editing something with this in.
The more I think about it though, the more I’m fine with it, especially after reading tempogain’s example. In particular, if it was a dialogue with “My sons make trouble. I can’t help it.” (where “it” means something like “the situation”), I think I’d be reluctant to say that’s wrong. It probably wouldn’t bug me enough to write to the publisher, anyway.
But I really don’t think a textbook should use an example this controversial
It should provide something more… natural I would say
You look at this sentence and you just know a foreigner wrote this
There’s plenty better examples to use
Hope they would change it
I really don’t wanna teach this stuff
I have to keep telling my students that what they learn from school is different from what we say in the USA and they should completely forgot this when they enter high school
Coz it’s professors that’s grading their college entrance exam paper
And professors know better than this and would most likely not give you an A with this kind of writing
The whole ed system is confusing here
It’s wrong. Clearly this discussion reflects the ambiguity it invites, and that alone merits change. The translation compounds the grammatical offense since ‘my son’s make trouble’ refers to an ongoing situation, while ‘couldn’t’ …
