Hacker News Reader

Comment by polypodiopsi | Hacker News Reader

To me the authors accusatory tone seems misguided and, indeed, clickbaity (people love to hate)- which is a shame, since the information about the architectural sculptures called spomenik the article offers is pretty interesting. I believe that the interest in the purely formal qualities of thise "spomeniks" is a proper appreciation. Getting people interested by these offers an entrypoint into a deeper engagement with their historical background and the representational purpose. "its great that pictures of spomeniks are circulating, you might wonder what the meaning of those seemingly alien structures in the nowhere actually is" would be the proper cause for propagating these information imho. Its actually remarka le about these memorials that they manage to get their image circulating.

View on HN

It bothers me more than it should that he calls them "spomeniks", because that's literally just a word meaning "monument" in the local languages.

It's like someone going "did you know American monuments are known as monuments locally?"

While that's true that we use word spomenik for all monuments, I think outside of Balkans it's now recognized as a word describing specific abstract and grandiose type of monument. So world (or Internet community at least) took our word and appropriated it to mean something else.

Anyway, if someone visit one of Balkan countries and ask to see spomenik, expect locals to be confused and would not know what exactly you mean.

Паметник would like to have a word!

More seriously, I think you're exactly right about the adopted internet-English meaning of 'spomenik' and the article is right to make a distinction between this particular (and much more interesting) variety and your more generic strictly-regime-sponsored concrete artblob.

Hence why I said "bothers me more than it should". Language lives and I know english took upon a certain meaning. It still tickles my brain wrong :)

This is common with loan words, though: Sahara, chai, manga, naan, salsa... They're all generic words which non-native speakers attach context to.

Yeah, people obsessed with Russia, and sometimes even normal experts studying Russia tend to use Russian words that way.

I agree. If you're familiar with the author this is quite typical of his output.

If you think that of Owen's output, for heaven's sake I fear for you if you ever read a Jonathan Meades article…

Yeah what’s the name for this accusatory tone highbrow clickbait? There’s a companion article on the shame you should feel about “ruin porn” because surely you feel “desire to gloat over the decomposing corpse of the West’s former Communist enemy.”

I can say I’ve never felt that but have enjoyed the sort of x-ray view you get of the structure sometimes + imagining what it was like at full splendor. To me it’s a combined feeling of wonder and loss.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com