我能夠怎麼幫助你 - seems wrong

[necroflux]

I heard this line in a Chinesepod mp3, and they don't go over this particular sentence. It seems to me that it should be "我怎麼能夠幫助你", but the dialog is "我能夠怎麼幫助你". Can someone explain why this is?

[HashiriKata]

Both are ok and can mean the same or different things depending on the context. Without the context, I'd take "我能(夠)怎麼幫助你" as a question meaning: How can I help you?

[Vitas]

我怎么能够帮你 seems to me that the speaker is trying to say i really cannot help you(with xxx)

while how can i help you?/what can i do to help you? should be 我怎么（做）才能帮你? in chinese

我能够怎么帮你 sounds natural to me, and i think it is somewhat like 我怎么能够帮你. but the tone is not so strong as 我怎么能够帮你 and this sound like that the speaker is unable other than reluctant to help out.

see 我能够怎么帮你， 你自己说, 事情都已经到这个地步了

我怎么能够帮你！ 这可是犯法的啊！

well, if 我能够怎么帮你 ends with a rising tone such as 我能够怎么帮你呢？ it is the same as how may i help you?

[Vitas]

i agree with hashirikata, the meaning of the two sentences mainly depends on the given context.

however, i think it is best to put" 才" after "怎么"（ 我怎么才能够帮你） to make it more standard.

and if one wants to offer to help in chinese, the followings are some sentences i come up with.

我能够帮你些什么吗？

要我帮你些什么吗？

有什么需要帮忙的吗？

[necroflux]

Thanks for the quick replies everyone. I forgot the all important context.. haha. It's a discussion between the boss and an employee. The boss is basically telling the employee that he needs to talk about his problems at work so the boss can figure out how to help him. Here's the entire line:

我需要你清楚地告诉我你能完成任务吗？是不是有什么困难？我能够怎么帮助你?

[Vitas]

我需要你清楚地告诉我你能完成任务吗？是不是有什么困难？我能够怎么帮助你?

it is a natural and proper chinese sentence. well, if it is an error dectecting exercise, there might be some inappropriate usage/sentence structure...

we did a lot of those boring excerises in high school, some of which are really hard even for native speakers like us students:cry:

in fact, i think the chinese language don't follow very strict grammar rules, especially in daily conversations. basically most speakers have developed their own way of speaking in their native languages.

as long as your lisenting materials are read by native speakers, you can always learn some common and useful expressions from them