The amount an accent is worth is up for debate. Heller told me it’s unclear whether the value of a linguistic resource is quantifiable or should be, and said attempts to attach numbers to language commercialization have been messy.

What’s clear is that the practice raises complicated questions. When does the “fun” of discovering another way of speaking cross into creepy exoticization-of-the-other territory? And if such interactions with foreigners turn regular people into specimens, what about the experience is “authentic” anyway? Businesses that use language as a product seem to be taking the theme-park mentality of “living villages” into actual towns, turning daily life into performance.

For example in recent decades the Irish language, once viewed among some as a marker of the backwards and uneducated, has become fashionable, especially among Ireland’s urban middle-class. Still, the actual use of Irish appears to be on the decline.

In a 2011 census, 41 percent of the population claimed they had some ability to speak Irish. A closer look at the numbers, however, shows that less than 2 percent of citizens speak Irish daily outside of the education system (where it is compulsory). That figure jumps to 35 percent in the Gaeltacht, the Irish-speaking counties along Ireland’s western and southern coasts. Here, where use of Irish is strongest in older generations but slipping among young people, it has lately become a source of revenue.

Every year, businesses that sell three- or four-week language learning vacation packages (cleverly combining edu-tourism and heritage tourism) attract thousands of international travelers to towns in the Gaeltacht, promising “immersion.” And the staff at local pubs will speak to travelers in Irish, “because they see you as part of this package that’s bringing money to the area, so it’s part of their job,” said Bernadette O’Rourke, a socio-linguist at Edinburgh’s Heriot-Watt University.

Sometimes, though, locals are irritated by the non-Irish speakers who expect to be accommodated. “[Tourists] start a conversation and they’re not proficient but they expect the person behind the counter to go through that process,” O’Rourke told me. “A shopkeeper might go along with it because it can be good for business, selling this authentic experience. But if it goes beyond the initial ‘hello, how are you,’ it may be going too far. It all depends on what people will put up with.”

To O’Rourke, the situation becomes problematic when those running the tourism enterprises are operating on a seasonal basis and not reinvesting in the community, which is often the case. As such, she asked, is it the local people themselves who become the commodities?

In the West Coast town of Ennis, the situation is even more curious. Ennis is near but outside the Gaeltacht; nevertheless, language advocates there are promoting the use of Irish in stores and hanging bilingual signs. “They’ve got local business people on board with Irish as a form of branding. But a lot of them are passionate about the language and feel a little bit guilty about using Irish as a commodity and getting money from it.”