Talk:Palinka

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[edit] Move request

I am using this title ("Palinka") because:

  1. it is neither Romanian nor Hungarian, so our nationalist drinkers won't get us in any revert-wars :-)
  2. it the most used in English on the Internet. (google says: 4,570 for palinka+brandy; 4,250 for pálinka+brandy; 407 for palinca+brandy)

Bogdan | Talk 18:08, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)

  1. For me, it doesn't make sense to have a word in Wikipedia which is neither Hungarian, neither Romanian, and it's not even English, especially when the software easily allows the needed diacritics. I checked Merriam-Webster Online and Encyclopaedia Britannica, but the first doesn't have "palinka", and the second finds two articles for both "palinka" and "pálinka". The only way to be neutral could be to merge this article into brandy. Otherwise, it should rather be renamed to what is meaningful in at least one language.
  2. Google search now, half a year later, shows that their number is equal (71,300 for both variants and 9,790 for either variant + brandy). Even in your figures, the Hungarian term is only a few percents more popular so it can't be called a standard English version (i.e. the one without accent). Besides, Wikipedia often uses the accented variants (based on the redirect) even when average English speakers use the accent-less ones, see e.g. Paul Erdős, rather than Paul Erdos.

Adam78 28 June 2005 15:30 (UTC)

That is now because Google disregards accents/diacritics when searching. Search for "ŞĂŢ" and you'd get the results from "SAT". bogdan ʤjuʃkə | Talk 28 June 2005 17:15 (UTC)
  • Oppose--common names. Yahoo shows only 2790 for Pálinka brandy, but 8650 for Palinka brandy (also 12 for palincă brandy, and 211 for palinca brandy). AFAIK, both Montreal and Quebec, for example, lost their accents because of the 'common names' policy. Niteowlneils 28 June 2005 21:38 (UTC)
There doesn't appear to be consensus for the move; the result was keep current title. Talrias (t | e | c) 10:58, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

Well "Montreal" and "Quebec" lost their accents in this wiki because it is the EN (English language) Wikipedia. In the FR (French language) Wikipedia, they retained their accents, of course. So I guess it's fair to use the "google-neutral" term "Palinka" here, although accented variations will probably be used in wikis of different languages. Don't forget that the target audience of this page is English-reading people; Americans for instance won't have access to accented keys on their keyboard, as most of them use a plain vanilla QWERTY keyboard.

One last thought. I've bought a very nice bottle of Swatmari Palinka in a porcelain flask while in Hungary. It is similar to the one on this page: http://www.vardadrink.hu/english/productsbottom.html The label says "SZILVAPÁLINKA" but the accent on the A is very tiny. Hugo Dufort 04:06, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Request for clarification & removal of non-idiomatic language

I suspect that this article was mostly written or edited by someone who's not a native English speaker. No harm, no foul, but some things remain that are non-idiomatic and should be changed:

  • Is "speck" a term in common usage? I'd never seen it used in this context before. It results in a lot of Google hits, but I'm still not sure.
    I removed it. It's the German word for bacon. See de:Speck.bogdan 23:16, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
  • I understand the illustration of the reference to "guggolós", but it's pretty clunky: there's a link to "cowered", for some reason. Could someone fix this up a little?
  • Likewise the reference to "alcoholists". This is not a word used in standard English. I was going to replace it with "alcoholics", but wasn't sure that would be appropriate, since that's really a medical term (someone suffering from alcohol addiction) which may or not be true here. Again, rewording needed.

That is all. --ILike2BeAnonymous 23:05, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

Not only is this page incomplete but it contains alot of errors too and I suspect it was written by a uni-biased Hungarian. Like it focuses only on the hungarian palinka, while excluding Romania's part almost totally. Also real double distilled palinca which is made from plums is 56% alcohol, not 60-80%, first distillation giving a 40% alcohol version then second distillation getting to around 56% depending on the "borhot"'s quality.

[edit] Factual mistakes

NOTE: the origin of PALINKA is Slavic. Proof: Palinka comes form Slovak (and other Slavic) PALENKA, which is DISTILLATE. The word PALENKA comes from Slavic/Slovak PALIT == TO DISTIL. Today PALENKA denotes any kind of distillate in Slovakia, especially fruit distillates. AladarP.

[edit] Palenka

I copied the content from the article Palenka to here, because it seems to be about the same or very similar subject and was an orphan. Someone knowledgeable could probably merge the content more neatly. -SpuriousQ (talk) 10:22, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

  • SpuriousQ, your merge makes a lot of sense, the articles were closely related. Guus 11:59, 22 February 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Production and aging

There's not much info regarding production and aging of it, is it bottled straight from the still, is it aged in glass, wood, are there any stipulations...etc. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by J.P.Lon (talk • contribs) 23:44, 13 April 2007 (UTC).


[edit] More on palinca vs. pálinka

Behind the debate there is some commercial interest and branding issue, not alone national pride. The motivation is to establish a well-known name for quality drinks made in the region out of fruits by distillation. Other examples of such names are ouzo, grappa, korn (German) or calvados (French).

The Hungarian government service "EU Tájékoztató Szolgálat" states that starting on 1. July 2002 in Hungary (and after Hungary joined the EU in the whole European Union), the word "pálinka" (spelt with á and k) can only be used for alcoholic drinks made from fruits without the addition of extra alcohol and aromas. See the article http://www.euvonal.hu/index.php?op=mindennapok_fogyasztovedelem&id=2 (in Hungarian).

According to another source (http://hvg.hu/kultura/20060421legendavadaszat/page2.aspx, "Heti Világgazdaság", a popular weekly magazin on economics and politics), later that year the European Council agreed that the word "pálinka" (again note the letters á and k) can only be used for drinks made in Hungary from various fruits by distillation, and for drinks made from apricot in certain territories of Austria ("barackpálinka").

Still according to this second source, the contract between Romania and the European Union allows for the word "palinca" (sorry, I cannot reproduce the proper accent on the a) as the name of the drink made in Romania.

Whether "palinca" can only be made from fruits by distillation is a concern of the players of the Hungarian alcohol industry, as they want to avoid the competition with similar tasting but lower quality drinks mixed from aromas, water and alcohol at lower production costs.

The fact that in the Transylvanian part of Romania the mother language of an essential part of the population is Hungarian, who (according to the above rules) cannot spell the name of the drink they make according to the rules of the language they speak, adds to the piquancies around this drink.

All in all, I think the discussion on the name of the drink is a typical manifestation of the region. The word is of Slavic origin; it probably diffused into Rumanian with the mediation of the Hungarian language. The procedure of enriching the alcohol content of fruit-based beverages via distillation is probably not the invention of either. All three nations could be proud of a quality product of the region, and it is a common interest to use the similarly sounding words of the three languages in the same meaning, i.e. as a differentiator of fruit-based quality distillations of the region from headache-causing swills.

Vadasz 22:05, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Hungarian and Romanian

I have reverted the recent reversions that emphasized Romanian over Hungarian by placing the Romanian word before the Hungarian in every case and by making pălincă the first word of the article. This seems to be a hot edit war here. While I am Hungarian, and so fully admit that I am in no way disinterested, I believe the Hungarian should be first for three reasons: First, this was the convention used in the article as it was first created, and with lack of a clear consensus, it ought to stand. Second, palinka is mostly produced in Transylvania, which, while in Romania, was part of Hungary until after World War I. Leaving aside the EXTREMELY hot issue of who has greater claim to the region, this means that until recently, palinka was produced in Hungary. The claim that it is a traditional Hungarian drink is not without merit; even aside from this. Even aside from this, it could easily be argued that the majority of palinka drinkers for the majority of the drink's existence have called in "pálinka." Third, aside from all other arguments, Hungary comes before Romania alphabetically; were there no other reasons for doing so, and was there no precedent established in the article, this should make the Hungarian come first in the article. I believe, however, that there are other reasons and that a precedent has been established.

I would ask that any reversions or revisions would be discussed here before being implemented.

Other changes I made included cleaning up the links, such as changing pears to [[Pear|pears]. Additionally, I made palinka standard throughout the article: pálinka was used in the first several paragraphs, and pălincă later. I changed the first word of the article to palinka, rather than either the Hungarian or Romanian.

Korossyl (talk) 22:42, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Palinka Request for Comment

[edit] 'Highly dangerous' home distillation

Evenb in poorly distilled spirits the concentration of the non-ethanol alcohols is so low that you would die of ethanol poisoning long before reaching toxic doses of the other alcohols. Think of it this way, distilling wine is not dangerous because the distillate contains nothing that was not already in the wine. Also, it does not take 'certification' to recognise the changes in the distillate, that just doesn't make sense. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.106.146.140 (talk) 07:30, 28 January 2008 (UTC)