Funny to see those are referred to in English as "Spomeniks". After living in the US for a decade, looking at this definitely brings an incredible feeling of nostalgia.
Damn it. I want to go back in time, and back to Sarajevo.
What Are Spomeniks?
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Re: What Are Spomeniks?
#12It's almost impossible to comprehend now that the communist revolution was, at one time, a highly progressive Utopian fantasy materialized. That for a short time it inspired works of art like this and was a source of optimism for millions of people before descending into the darkness of the cold war. It gives serious pause to the alluring ideal of socialism in this country. Everyone always thinks that their time will be different and that they have it all figured out. But the insidious side of human nature that always thwarts such ideals and reduces to authoritarianism is a constantly insurmountable baseline of what we are.
Re: What Are Spomeniks?
#13It's almost impossible to comprehend now that the communist revolution was, at one time, a highly progressive Utopian fantasy materialized. That for a short time it inspired works of art like this and was a source of optimism for millions of people before descending into the darkness of the cold war. It gives serious pause to the alluring ideal of socialism in this country. Everyone always thinks that their time will…
Keep in mind that Yugoslavia was a completely different thing during the cold war. It was a communist country that was not part of the Comintern, or the Warsaw pact. It, in fact, had open borders with the west.
This caused it to be in a much better place economically than the rest of the communist world.
There's an old nostalgic american tourist piece about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RRnCnO1Y2c&has_verified=1
Re: What Are Spomeniks?
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
No. The locally-used name here, "Spomeniks", more precisely groups and identifies these structures than the foreign word "Memorial" would. Calling them by another name would make it difficult to communicate usefully about them, while simultaneously stripping away a piece of their cultural heritage: their native-language name. Additionally, as the article notes, Spomenik translates to Monument in english, not Memorial…
"Spomenik" is literally the word for "monument", right? Here's an article from 1849 mentioning building a Napoleonic monument, calling it a spomenik: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=rz8_AQAAMAAJ&dq=%22spome... If you mentioned to another former Yugoslavian that you had drawn a picture of a spomenik, would it be implicitly clear that you meant one of these postwar memorials, or could they reasonably assume you mea…
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Re: What Are Spomeniks?
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
No. The locally-used name here, "Spomeniks", more precisely groups and identifies these structures than the foreign word "Memorial" would. Calling them by another name would make it difficult to communicate usefully about them, while simultaneously stripping away a piece of their cultural heritage: their native-language name. Additionally, as the article notes, Spomenik translates to Monument in english, not Memorial…
In England, we call Stonehenge a monument: https://heritagecalling.com/2016/10/10/im-sorry-but-what-is-...
If there were hundreds or thousands of very closely related in time and purpose monuments all over England, there would be a more specific name to group those, too. Calling Spomeniki "monuments" is like calling a tractor a "vehicle" -- it's correct, but it's a loss of useful grouping information.
Re: What Are Spomeniks?
#16Is there not a perfectly fine English translation, "Memorial"?
No. The locally-used name here, "Spomeniks", more precisely groups and identifies these structures than the foreign word "Memorial" would. Calling them by another name would make it difficult to communicate usefully about them, while simultaneously stripping away a piece of their cultural heritage: their native-language name. Additionally, as the article notes, Spomenik translates to Monument in english, not Memorial…
Yes.
As someone who at one time spoke fluent Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian, I can confirm that "spomenik" can be (and sometimes is!) translated as "memorial". Indeed, the root of the word is a verb that in its archaic sense can mean "to remember", as does the verbal root of "memorial". Furthermore, "spomenik" can also be translated as "monument".
So while the word often is used in the context of the WWII socialist memorials, the word in fact just means "monument" or "memorial". For example, here's an article using the term for a memorial to veterans ("defenders"), specifically those who died, from the 1991-1995 Croatian War for Independence: https://pakrackilist.hr/spomenik-hrvatskim-braniteljima-dovr...
I don't completely disagree with the author's idea to use the original term to add some local color, but it's not a special term, just one of the general terms used for memorials and monuments. A related term, "spomenica", is also frequently used, but I'm not sure about the nuances between these two terms.
I'm sure a native speaker could fill us in.
Re: What Are Spomeniks?
#17Bosnian here. I would never call spomeniks spomeniks in English. I would call them monuments and spomenik in Bosnian. Besides nostalgia that they cause in yugo nostalgic people - I don't see how they are special in any way
Re: What Are Spomeniks?
#18Straight to the photos. They are beautiful! https://www.spomenikdatabase.org/photo-directory
Thank you for taking the time to post the link. I would have moved on and missed them otherwise. They are truly beautiful indeed!
Re: What Are Spomeniks?
#19It's almost impossible to comprehend now that the communist revolution was, at one time, a highly progressive Utopian fantasy materialized. That for a short time it inspired works of art like this and was a source of optimism for millions of people before descending into the darkness of the cold war. It gives serious pause to the alluring ideal of socialism in this country. Everyone always thinks that their time will…
Please don't take HN threads on generic ideological tangents. They lead to the same few predictable themes, repeated over and over, usually nastily. They're a sort of recitation, which is the opposite of the curious discussion this site is for. One is about repeating things, the other is about saying new things.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
Re: What Are Spomeniks?
#20Is there not a perfectly fine English translation, "Memorial"?
Of course, but it's a cool word and it's being used in this context to indicate a specific kind of a memorial from a specific part of the world, which is what makes this post interesting. "Memorials" generically wouldn't make as interesting a topic.
Generic words are often adopted into other languages to carry a more specific meaning, though damned if I can think of an example right now.
I'm sure the title "What Are Spomeniks?" doesn't help because it's basically trolling everyone who speaks a Slavic language, but it's also kind of a cool-looking title and I'd be sad to change it. (How about this? Think of it as ostranenie: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defamiliarization)