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this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2023
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Linguistics
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Mir ist kalt. Sie ist mir bekannt. Mir ist dieser Preis viel zu teuer.
Draußen ist es so kalt, da frieren dir die Eier ab!
That's absolutely valid use of personal pronouns.
We say exactly this for “I am cold” in Czech. I have no problems with that nor your other examples, as they actually refer to the first person’s perspective. It is them who is cold and the general pronoun man would not make sense.
However, imagine a YouTuber showing off a vintage computer, saying “above the keyboard, you’ll find your cursor keys” to the audience. As a viewer who most likely does not own such a computer, in no sense of the word are the keys mine.
Oh, you are serious that you don't get this pragmatic construction. You need not to interpret this as a literally-meant possessive, because it isn't a literal possession. If you cannot do that, we aren't getting anywhere.
I don’t, mir is not a possessive. The sentence could be literally translated as “For me, [it] is cold”. The feeling of cold is the speaker’s perspective expressed logically.
But why use my ABCs rather than the ABCs? The alphabet is the same for everyone, the feeling of cold in a location is not.