I was working with a group of students, taking about visual languages, trying to describe the concept as one that is as much a language as say, "English, French or Urdu, or whatever", I said. A teacher snorted. It was weird. I don't know whether they meant to snort, or whether they misheard what I said when I pronounced the word, Urdu. Maybe it was just bad timing and they had something caught in their throat.