Friday, Firemen and Foxes

There are a few children at school who have come from Saudi and have virtually no English. I was going through some flash cards with one today and it showed up how complicated our language is. We looked at some pictures and matched them to simple cvc words. All was going well until we looked at a fox...

Me: Do you know this animal?
A: Fox
Me: Well done. Can you find the word fox?
He looked at the few options. Fox was right in front of him. He read all the other words and ignored fox. I pointed to the word
Me:F. O. X. fox.
A: no. It no fox
Me: yes F. O. X...fox
He shook his head and kept pointing to the end of the word.
A: no no...no s...no fox. fuck...it fuck not fox...look no s....fuck

Inwardly I was guffawing, but I did explain it to him with a straight face.

I hope the firemen see that the pic I took of them was in the paper today. I might have to go down to the station to make sure. It is a shame they didn't print my name though.