Talk:Palinka

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Contents 1 Move request 2 Request for clarification & removal of non-idiomatic language 3 Factual mistakes 4 Palenka

[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)