The objective of this article is to describe the main characteristics of ‘football field’s anti-Semitism’, to understand its main causes, and to answer the question of whether anti-Semitism among football fans constitutes a symptom of one of the kinds of anti-Semitism discussed in the literature of the subject, or is its own kind of phenomenon. Based on reports of racism in Polish and Ukrainian stadiums, press articles, internet material, and in-depth interviews with fans of the Cracovian team Wisła, the authors conclude that football field’s anti-Semitism is a specific type. Even though footballs fans use content characteristic of modern or contemporary religion-based anti-Semitism, the addressees of their hatred are not followers of Judaism, members of the Jewish ethnic group, or the state of Israel, but fans of the opposing teams. Anti-Semitic incidents recur in places with a long history of Polish-Jewish coexistence, where the resulting antagonisms have been retained till today. The figure of the ‘Jew’ appears to be an effective, historically tested, method of showing contempt—the fans make use of the available content to insult their rivals.

This article shows that Classical Arabic expresses verbal number. Arabic, of all the Semitic language family, meets the typological tests of the languages expressing verbal number. In addition, I will show that Classical Arabic provides a morphological verb form to express number. I will, however, show that for the form to express verbal number it requires a combination of morphological and semantic conditions. Without which the designated form does not express number, but expresses transitivity or the transfer of agency. These conditions are: form II must come from a root that has a form I, form I must be the transitive meaning of the root and the root must express an instant action. Form II, therefore, does not exclusively express number. Verbal number in Arabic is conditional. However, I will also propose that when form II verb expresses number, it does not express the transfer of agency.

More than 30 years ago Andrzej Zaborski (1983; 1987 {1983}) collected and analyzed all Cushitic and Omotic numerals, which were described in his time, and tried to analyze their internal structure. His two pioneering studies stimulated the present attempt to collect all available relevant data about Cushitic numerals and to analyze them in both genetic (Afroasiatic) and areal (Omotic, Ethio-Semitic and Nilo-Saharan) perspectives, all at the contemporary level of our knowledge. With respect to the long mutual interference between various groups of Cushitic and Omotic languages, it is necessary to study the numerals in both the language families together. The presented material is organized in agreement with the genetic classification of these languages. On the basis of concrete forms in individual languages the protoforms in partial groups are reconstructed, if it is possible, and these partial protoforms of numerals in the daughter protolanguages are finally compared to determine the inherited forms. The common cognates are finally compared with parallels in other Afroasiatic branches, if they exist, or with counterparts in Ethio-Semitic or Nilo-Saharan languages, if they could be borrowed from or adapted into the Cushitic or Omotic languages.

The lack of a comprehensive etymological dictionary of the best documented and, in many accounts, main Semitic language, i.e., Arabic, is a serious drawback for progress in our knowledge of the background and evolution of lexical studies of the whole Afrasian phylum. Any serious attempt at achieving that goal would require a team of a number of scholars working hard during several years; however, in the meantime, a modest shortcut could be to consecrate some personal efforts in that direction on a single important Arabic dialect, and this is what we are presently trying to bring about, within the project of a linguistic encyclopaedia of Andalusi Arabic. So far, our endeavours have cast some new lights of lexical borrowing not only from well-known cases of Aramean and Persian origins, but also, e.g., from Akkadian and Old Egyptian, as well as a rather detailed account of phonetic changes and lexical composition scarcely detected or never heretofore suspected and having often prevented the recognition of the true etyma of Semitic and non-Semitic stock, of which the present article is, of course, only a résumé and introduction.

The paper first gives a survey of all the etymologies proposed so far for the Greek term for „pyramid” within the Greek language and the Oriental languages. Then the elaboration of a wholly new suggestion is ventured on the basis of phonological criteria in the context of the supposed Late Egyptian source language.

The motto of Zofia Nałkowska’s short-story collection Medaliony [Medalions] – “People doomed people to this fate” [Polish, “Ludzie ludziom zgotowali ten los”] – as obvious as it may apparently seem, has aroused various controversies. Henryk Grynberg believed that the only right formula, the one that would do justice to those persecuted, would have been “People doomed Jews to this fate”. Recently, the discussion was resumed in a book on the portrayal of the Holocaust in Medaliony – Zagłada w „Medalionach” Zofii Nałkowskiej, edited by Tomasz Żukowski: one of its essays (by Żukowski and Aránzazu Calderón Puerta) notices that endeavours to universalise the Holocaust is at least premature for the Poles tending to avoid facing the truth about their own contribution to annihilation of the Jews. While the threads addressed in these debates are important, they disregard the beliefs and the system of values Nałkowska adhered to. The Polish novelist adopted the view that man and the pleasure he takes in inflicting pain is the actual cause of evil. This inclination revealed itself not only during the war. This more general observation was rooted in her knowledge of life, relations between people, and daily cruelty. Supported by an ideology and furnished with technical resources, the war added a historical dimension to this bent. Moreover, Nałkowska was definitely not one among those who stayed silent in respect of the Jewish victims. Conversely, a few of the stories in Medaliony speak exactly about this problem, never trying to conceal anti-Semitic attitudes among Poles.