This story reminded me of something, a short story we read in german class some years ago, called "Ein Tisch ist ein Tisch" by Peter Bichsel.
It's about this lonely old man who amuses himself by changing the meanings of the words in his diction. I don't recall the details, but the man might have said that, for example, the newspaper was now called the dresser, and the dresser was called the door, and walking was called swimming - I'm making all these up, but you get the picture. At the end of the story, the fellow tries to have a trivial conversation with his neighbors and discovers he can't understand what they're saying.
Some people in my class thought the story was very funny - and it was in a macabre sort of way. Mostly I just thought it was depressing.
I just did a search on the web and found
http://www.fliff.com/films2002/table.htm which appears to be a retelling (?) of the story as a movie. But this sounds like the story has a happy ending. (Crap, I've forgotten any german i knew, but I'm still tempted to find my old text and try to read this again.)
k
