Subscribe | UPI Odd Newsletter Subscribe KATHMANDU, Nepal, Sept. 26 (UPI) -- A Japanese expert on Himalayan languages, who insists the yeti was simply a case of linguistic mistaken identity, has raised the hackles of many Nepalese. Dr. Matako Nabuka is a researcher and mountaineer who spent 12 years in Nepal, Tibet and Bhutan conducting, he told the BBC, research into the elusive abominable snowman. Advertisement Hackles began to rise in Kathmandu earlier this month when Nabuka told a press conference that yetis were not mysterious apes or hairy hominids living in the high Himalayas. They were, he said, quite simply, Himalayan brown bear, known in a regional Tibetan dialect as "meti." Then the Nepali press and local opinion soon chimed in. A letter to the editor of the Kathmandu Post headlined "Yetiquette" took Nabuka to task for linguistic carelessness. Signed by Bha Dawa, the letter says the Japanese researcher may have spent too long in the wrong mountains and had himself mixed up his words. Both "yeti" and "meti" mean a near-mythical beast, said Mr Dawa.
