Neutrogena hand cream (for dry or chapped hands), specifically. Which I’ve used as a moisturizer for dry skin and a healing cream for abraded skin, on various parts of my body (especially as an adjunct to the coconut oil I use daily on my feet, legs, hands, and arms); it comes in almond-scented and unscented versions. Unremarkable until recently. But yesterday it excited the interest of four linguists, in exchanges on Facebook.
Set off by Monica Macaulay:
— MM: This is a new one on me. I ordered some Neutrogena lotion and the picture looked like what I’m used to, but look what came!!! Is that Turkish? Something went awry with the space-time-language continuum? I’m very puzzled.
(#1) EL KREMİ in its tube
— Geoffrey Nathan: Definitely Turkish — i’s without dots, c-cedillas, s-cedillas. No idea what it means, however. Just remembered — eller means ‘hands’. From a morphology problem.
— AZ [who, once a teacher of introductory morphology, also recognized eller]: Had the same experience a little while back. The lotion seems to be unchanged, but the packaging was a surprise.
— MM > AZ: Really?!? So this is a known unknown? Very, very strange.
— AZ > MM: Well, known to me. You’re only the second person in my experience to have gotten Neutrogena in Turkish.
