“Is my pronunciation wrong?” the lady wanted to know.
And I thought: What did it matter whether she had got the pronunciation right or wrong? Like many Americans who travel the world and are none the wiser for it, she had gotten the entire culture wrong, the entire people wrong, the entire world outside the American shores wrong. She personified the argument against unrestricted, commercial, IMF-enforced international tourism, the case that international tourism works out in effect as a crude modern version of colonialism, with the old disrespect, condescension, or contempt for local cultures being suppressed or kept under wraps (sometimes cleverly hidden even from oneself), and without the blood and the disembowelment that previously accompanied these attitudes and such excursions.
[From a fictional work in progress: to support this and other works in progress, please consider buying my already published books at this site and others.]