I think house cats just try to communicate and are smart enough to figure out that sounds work better than body language. I wouldn't be surprised if a wild cat would learn similar behavior if it lived with humans.
One of our cats has learned to make sounds like a crying baby and to occasionally say something that sounds like "mum" - it actually upsets my wife quite a bit even though she knows she is being manipulated.
Domestic cats raised among humans and feral domestic cats have very different personalities. Feral cats can be quite wild, although we have tamed a few. They are very quiet and very secretive, quite unlike house cats.