"You are asking a wrong person" vs "You are asking the wrong person" [duplicate]

Possible Duplicate:
“A wrong answer” vs “the wrong answer”

Can I say "you are asking a wrong person"? A quick google search seems to suggest that this is wrong and you should say "you are asking the wrong person", instead.

I can't seem to get it. Why? There should be a lot of wrong persons to ask a specific question, right?

Solution 1:

I think the distinction is as follows:

"I'm the wrong person to answer that" means that you currently are filling the role of the wrong person. You are conceptually linked to the role of the wrong person, it isn't permanently affixed to you.

Compare that to "I'm a stupid person" which means that you permanently have a property. The property of stupidity is permanently linked to you - you are an example of it.

Solution 2:

Can I say "you are asking a wrong person"?

You could, but a native speaker wouldn't.

It's similar to you're barking up the wrong tree. You're only addressing a single person, and it's in comparison to the right person.

Yes, there can be more than one right person, too, but this is just the way English goes in this case.

Solution 3:

Yes, but you're asking a specific wrong person, videlicet ME, not just any wrong person. And I want to set up my followthrough: for perfect courtesy I should continue by telling you "The RIGHT person is Joe over there."

Actually, that's so much who-shot-John. I say "the" because it's the idiom. If I said "a" I'd get funny looks.

Solution 4:

I don't know if it is technically incorrect, but 'asking a wrong person' feel as though you are assigning that person with the property of wrongness, rather than making a mistake yourself.

So, in an example take from a comment

You are asking a stupid person

is okay, since stupid is possibly a suitable adjective for that person, whereas

You are asking a wrong person

implies that the person being questioned has an innate property of wrongness, which isn't the meaning of the phrase. It is the questioner that is wrong.

You could sort of make the phrase work in the right context, such as

Listen boy, there are two types of people in the world. There are the
right people, those who share our views and the wrong people. When you don't
know what to do and need advice, make sure you're not asking a wrong person.

If there are multiple people who a question could be addressed to, the phrase used is

You are asking the wrong people

or to make it more explicit that you are only asking one person

You are asking one of the wrong people