The Problem of the Seal

Over the weekend, I was watching one of my parent's favorite home renovation shows, Fixer Upper, when I realized something fairly amusing that has occurred between a dialect of English and the pronunciation and understanding of a fairly common term.

Confused yet?

I'll start by saying that in a few of my classes in college, I noticed people using the phrase "window seal" when talking about the small ledge that sits beneath a window inside a house.

Understandably, I was slightly taken aback.

"Window seal?" I thought. "What on earth does this mean?"

Then in another class, I was asked to edit a paper in which a student had used this phrase. I was one of very few to have caught the mistake and written it down in my notes.

"By window seal, I believe you mean window sill."

Now, to get back to Fixer Upper. This is when I finally realized how this mistake has become so frequent (especially in my region).

You see, the family of reno experts in Fixer Upper are from Texas. The wife, in particular, is the person in question. She very plainly told her husband something about the window sill of the house they were renovating, however, because of her Texas accent, the word sill sounded exactly like seal.

I'm from New Mexico. You know this. We're greatly influenced by Texans, in that they're our neighbors and they think they're awesome and they believe we're their suburb (we're not, thank you very much).

I believe this error has spread, at least to New Mexico, by way of Texans. With their accent they've confused the brains of New Mexicans who think Texans are smarter than them, and somehow they've all ended up saying "window seal."

I really hope that this stops spreading, because I'm tired of explaining what a sill is.

[love and homemade cookies cooling on a window sill]

{Rani D.}