Memoirs of Kitty Siam Ch. 38

I crossed the bridge quietly and once on the other side I kept to the tall grass that grew along the river's bank so as not to alarm the humans. As I moved closer I could begin to make out language patterns, and a few minutes later the universal translator (UT) was beginning to pick up specific words. The words that the UT was able to lock on to were not from one specific language but from three separate languages that one would not expect to find here. Several words were identified at being from the Hindi and Khmer languages from Earth, and of course many more words were in a very ancient dialect of Annu. The words were not clear in their pronunciation as it appears that the people of Angkor had taken these words for their own and added a local flavor to them as the Americans took the English language from Brittan and made it their own over several centuries. I would surmise that the people that I was listening too had about sixty thousand years to make these languages their own. My hope at this point was that the words I was hearing kept their original meaning other wise the translations that the UT was giving me were totally wrong.

The translations that the UT was giving me did not make much sense given that the sentences that the natives were using were cobbled together using bastardized words from three totally dissimilar languages. I knew that it was early in my linguistic exploration of this culture, but I soon came to the realization that I would probably have to tell the UT to scrap what it knew about the language here and begin and entirely new language database just as it did when I first encountered the Kreetins on Galora.

My thoughts turned to some of the old scary movies that I had watched with my matrix mates back at the academy. As I made my exit from the tall grass onto the path heading toward the bathers I thought of them fleeing in terror at the sight of the approaching bug eyed monster, or in this case, the approaching big black cat. I padded my way down the path and came across three of the bathing girls. These three had finished with their man and it seemed that since the other males had finished their bath, these three were now free to bathe each other... that is until they noticed me coming toward them.

I was a bit dismayed that they did not turn and flee in terror, and I was quite surprised when the oldest girl began yelling, "Mandira billi, mandira billi, mandira billi!" which quickly got everyone's attention. What they did next stopped me in my tracks... the group as a whole stopped what they were doing and came toward the path that I was on. They stood and stared at me for a few seconds until what appeared to be the alpha male of the group approached me, dropped to his knees with his hands clasped together at his chest... from his kneeling position he extended his hands palms down on the ground before him and then pressed his forehead to the back of his hands, then began to utter what appeared to be a prayer that the UT could not fully decipher. Upon seeing this, the rest of the group followed their leader and did the same.

I queried the UT as to the meaning of the words, "Mandira billi." The UT took a second or two to respond with sixteen translations of the phrase, but only the Hindi translation made any sense... "Temple cat."