Oliver gets called a duck in class

Oliver is my oldest.  He's in an Arabic school, and doing his best to keep up in Arabic.  He has a lovely first grade teacher.  I'm also working at the school, part-time, in the English department.  Yesterday his teacher told me about a situation in class.  I just have to share it.

She was going around the room writing "batal" بطل on each child's hand.  This word can be translated as "hero" or "brave".  He often has this word written on his worksheets when he does a good job - and for my perfectionist son, it is often.  The teachers go on and on about his neat Arabic handwriting.  For those of you who know my handwriting, his is better than mine.  I'm not worried about his handwriting, but I do want him to speak!  But I digress. 

So the teacher was putting this on the kids' hands to show them they were great students.  As she was writing this on his hand, Oliver turned to the teacher and asked, "Why are you writing 'duck' on my hand?"  I'm sure the wheels in his brain were turning, "is duck a good thing or a bad thing?". 

The word for duck is "bata"  بطة and as the 'l' sound in Arabic is just a little different than the English 'l' he did not recognize the difference in the two words.  I'm glad he learned his teacher thinks he is a "hero" and not a "duck" !
                                                  ~ Um Tulip