(Found) Short Story About a Linguist on an Alien Planet

[johnnyjet]

A friend of mine sent out a request for the name & author of a short story:

Can you help me? I can't remember the name or author of a story.

It's about a linguist on an alien planet. He has the hardest time learning a language -- finally he does, only to find it morphs overnight to a completely different language and all the aliens get it immediately, like slang or lingo changes that work their way into our languages, but at an accelerated pace.

I first thought of the Sheila Finch xenolinguist stories, but I couldn't remember one with that storyline.

 

[Stuart Suffel]

Not Ted Chiang's Story of Your Life?

 

[otistdog]

Oh, dang -- I'm pretty sure I've read this. Can you provide any more details at all (no matter how trivial or fuzzy) that might narrow it down? Like:
Was the linguist alone or part of a team? How long had he/she been there? Did he/she have any tools of interest? Did the aliens speak English at all -- if so, how well? Did the linguist interact with one or several aliens? What was the alien settlement like (i.e. camp, village, town, city)? How was the fast-changing nature of the aliens' language significant to the plot?

 

[johnnyjet]

Just found out it's "Shall We Have a Little Talk?" by Robert Sheckley. The fast changing nature of their language is a kind of built-in immune system to protect them from invasion. Thanks.

 

[otistdog]

Thank you for posting back with the answer! I appreciate it, and I'm sure future searches will, too.