Re: Chinese Dialect Question

JR wrote:
>
> and on 9/30/03 9:46 PM, Garth Wallace at gwalla@DESPAMMED.COM wrote:
>
>>JR wrote:
>>
>>>I'm not a sinologist, and I've even forgotten most of my Chinese, but I do
>>>know my pinyin (standard romanization for Mandarin) - Quan is the correct
>>>way to write the name. The 'q' is an alveo-palatal affricate /ts\/, and
>>>after one of those 'uan' is pronounced something like /yEn/ or maybe /HEn/.
>>>
>>>Hmm ... did I just use an ethical possessive up there?
>>
>>Where? I don't think "my Chinese" or "my pinyin" counts...they're
>>referring to your own skills.
>
>
> I didn't say "pinyin skills," though, just "pinyin." I was referring to
> pinyin itself, which really has nothing to do with me. If you take "my
> pinyin" literally, it doesn't even make sense - the word "my" seems only to
> make it more personal, in a similar way to the "your average X" construction
> discussed in the other thread. The sentence would have had the same truth
> value if I left "my" out. Of course, I don't really know anything about
> these ethical possessives or datives, I'm just thinking out loud.
But when I say, for example, "My Aikido isn't that great", I'm not
saying that Aikido in general isn't very good and simply implying that
I'm interested in that state of affairs. I'm saying that my abilities
aren't very good. Similarly, if I say "Your Georgian is fantastic!" I'm
referring to your command of Georgian, not the language as a whole
(although I think it's pretty keen).