Between a bird and a fence

A few day ago, a friend of mine introduced a bird called Pegar  (Lophira ignita)  on the internet.  She then linked it to the popuilar Malay saying “Harap pagar, pagar makan padi” saying that there is a mistake in the saying.  The saying means, putting one’s faith in the fence (pagar) but it is the fence that eats one’s paddy.  I am certain that that is actually not the case.  As it is the saying means putting our faith in the wrong person who goes on to be the one who does us harm or malice.  I do however think there is a certain confusion here.  Another friend also asked, why would any one put one’s faith in a bird.  Let me clarify.

I think the confusion began long ago with the old Malay Jawi script.  The Jawi script is a Malay alphabet based on the Arabic alphabetical system. Specifically it involves four letters in that orthographic system. The letters are

alif	ﺍ
ga	ݢ
ra	ﺭ
pa	ﭪ

If you use the old Jawi system, you spell both pegar and pagar in the same way which is PA, GA,RA. It is only in the new system that the ALIF is added to differentiate between the A and E consonant sounds. So in the new system, pegar will be spelt pa,ga,ra and pagar – pa, alif, ga, alif, ra. A note of caution however, in the old system, PA will be spelt using FA and GA will be replaced with JIM because in the old days they borrowed the alphabets directly from Arabic.

Anyway, if the old Jawi spelling, we would have written the words in exactly the same way so we will not be able to differentiate the words when we read them in a sentence. Thus the following two lines will read exactly the same.

1.      Harapkan pagar, pagar makan padi

2.      Harapkan pagar, pegar makan padi.

So when they changed the script to the Roman script, the difference was not made and thus the mistake was made and then perpetuated simply because the first people did not know the difference between the words.

Does this have any effect on the meaning? Yes, certainly, a massive one.

Harapkan pagar, pagar makan padi (trust the fence but it is the fence that eats our paddy) does not really make sense.  

On the other hand, harapkan pagar, pegar makan padi (trust in the fence but it is the pegar that eats our paddy), makes perfect sense because a fence would not keep our the pegar bird because they can fly even if for a short distance like the chicken if indeed the pegar cannot fly.

Semantically the latter would mean that we have put our faith in the wrong thing because that thing does not have the ability to stop the intruder. This makes it a problem misguided faith not misplaced faith like in the former saying. That is a significant difference in meaning and a much larger implication all because the two words could not be differentiated in orphographic system we employed to write them.