Linguistic Gap Analysis — James (Yakuba) 1–5

English → Fulfulde | Phase 1 Step 8

Curriculum: James 1–5 Core passage: James 2:14–26 (Faith and Works) Doctrines covered: Faith and Works; Trials and the Testing of Faith; Wisdom from Above; Favoritism and the Poor; Taming the Tongue; Worldliness versus Friendship with God; Prayer and Healing; Patience and the Lord’s Return; Confession and Restoration

This analysis extends, and never contradicts, the baseline Romans translation_memory.json, bible_term_registry.json, and doctrine_risk_registry.json. Every term already fixed by the Romans package is treated here as a constraint, not a fresh decision. James introduces its own linguistic terrain — sharper on faith/works than Romans, and newly exposed to imago Dei, oath-speech, confession practice, and the parousia — which this document maps systematically.

Method note on Fulfulde’s thinner tradition: As established in the Romans package, Fulfulde (Pular/Fulfulde/Maasina Fulfulde dialect continuum) lacks a single settled reference New Testament translation. James, as a shorter, less frequently translated Epistle, is even thinner in existing attestation than Romans. Consequently more terms below require descriptive compounds rather than crystallized single words, and more entries carry a mandatory native-speaker/theologian confirmation flag than would be typical for a better-attested target language.

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1. Doctrine Vocabulary Matrix

For each doctrine: the available Fulfulde term(s), their inherent weaknesses/collision risks, and the recommended handling strategy for Phase 2.

1.1 Faith and Works (core passage doctrine, James 2:14–26)

Available term(s)	Weakness	Recommended strategy
gomɗinal (faith) — REUSE Romans TM	Covers both saving trust and demons’ bare cognitive assent (2:19) within the same book; the word alone cannot disambiguate.	Reuse exactly; every occurrence must carry a contextual gloss (trust-in-Christ vs. mere intellectual assent) rather than relying on the word to self-disambiguate.
golle (works)	Standard word for ordinary labor AND Islamic 'amal (deeds actively weighed for paradise-entry). No neutral alternative exists — any Fulfulde word for “deeds/actions” will carry this same weighing connotation, since it is embedded in general moral vocabulary, not a specialized religious register.	Do not attempt to invent a “safer” synonym — none exists and a neologism would obscure rather than clarify. Instead, mandate an explicit accompanying teaching frame at every occurrence of James 2: works are fruit and evidence, never the basis, of standing before God. This is a doctrine-teaching problem, not a lexical-choice problem.
gomɗinal tan (faith alone)	Direct site of the historic “James vs. Paul” tension; readers may hear v.24 as Scripture refuting gomɗinal tan as a category, rather than refuting a counterfeit, workless imitation of it.	Retain the literal compound (do not soften or omit “tan”/alone). Pair with mandatory harmonization footnote distinguishing James’s target (a bare, fruitless profession) from Paul’s doctrine (Christ’s work received by faith apart from meritorious works).
waɗugol peewal (justification) — REUSE Romans TM	Identical Fulfulde phrase now carries two related but distinct senses across the two books: Paul’s forensic declaration (Romans 4) vs. James’s vindicating demonstration (James 2:21,24,25).	Mandatory exact reuse (no alternative rendering permitted) plus a standing harmonization note at every James occurrence, per the term registry.
peewal jibinaangal (imputed righteousness, Gen 15:6 citation) — REUSE Romans TM	None distinct from Romans; this is a verbatim shared OT citation.	Mandatory exact reuse; zero tolerance for divergence, since any variant wording would imply James teaches a different doctrine about the same historical event.
hisde (save, verb)	No verb form exists in Romans TM (only the noun kisal); this is a new derivation, unattested in any settled translation.	Treat as provisional. Flag every occurrence for native-speaker confirmation before Phase 2 lock-in; do not treat as final until confirmed.
noddaa gaanuko Alla (friend of God)	Shares surface vocabulary with the Qur’anic Khalīlullāh title for Ibrahim — a genuine point of contact, but risk of assumed shared theological content.	Retain the term as a rhetorical bridge; require explicit teaching of the full grace-framed Abraham narrative rather than letting the shared title stand alone.

Overall strategy for this doctrine: This is the single highest-density risk cluster in the letter. No lexical substitution can resolve the faith/works tension — it must be resolved by teaching content layered onto necessarily works/deeds-adjacent vocabulary. Recommend a standing sidebar in all Phase 2 lesson materials on 2:14–26 titled something like “Same words, one gospel,” walking through Genesis 15:6 → Romans 4 → James 2 as one coherent redemptive-historical account rather than a contradiction.

1.2 Trials and the Testing of Faith

Available term(s)	Weakness	Recommended strategy
jarrabaare / jarrabde (trial / tempt)	Shares an Arabic-derived root with Islamic ibtilā’ (trial from Allah, viewed as morally neutral or even favorable — a sign of divine attention). James uses the same Fulfulde root for two senses: growth-producing trial (1:2-4, permitted by God) and sin-enticing temptation (1:13-14, explicitly never from God).	Retain the shared root (no viable alternative exists), but mandate a disambiguating modifier or clause at each occurrence, distinguishing “trial God allows for growth” from “temptation that entices to sin, never from God” — parallel to how the Romans package handled providence against fatalistic natal.
munyal (endurance)	One of the four pillars of Pulaaku; extremely strong positive cultural resonance, but risk of the term functioning as a purely cultural-stoic virtue independent of Christ-centered hope.	Exploit the resonance deliberately, but every occurrence in trial/endurance passages must explicitly anchor munyal to hope in Christ’s promises (parallel treatment to jam/peace in the Romans package, which is similarly a high-frequency cultural term needing doctrinal fencing).
timmuɗo (mature/complete)	Risk of collapsing into a Sharia-style “flawless legal compliance” sense of “perfect.”	Gloss explicitly as organic moral/spiritual maturity, not sinlessness.
laamateeri nguurndam (crown of life)	Literal circlet-crown imagery is not a natural Fulani royal-status symbol (turbans, staffs mark status regionally).	Retain descriptive rendering (“kingly reward of life”) rather than a literal crown image; note for illustrators/oral teachers to avoid a circlet-crown visual.

1.3 Wisdom from Above

Available term(s)	Weakness	Recommended strategy
ñeeñal (wisdom)	Sits between two crowded near-synonyms: hakkille (Pulaaku pastoralist practical good sense — purely human-cultural) and Arabic-derived hikma (Islamic divinely-granted wisdom, cf. Qur’anic al-Hikmah).	Fence explicitly: use ñeeñal but tie it grammatically to “from above” / “from the Spirit” at every occurrence in James 1:5 and 3:13-17, so it is never read as either purely human sagacity or a generic Islamic-theological wisdom-gift.
aadee-tan / ummoraaɗo ruuhuuji bonɗi (earthly/demonic wisdom)	Connects to the ruuhuuji bonɗi (demons) fencing problem below.	Consistent cross-reference required; do not introduce a different demon-term here than used in 2:19 and 3:6.
ceniinde, jamre, newiinde, jaɓoore, heewuɗe yurmeende, ngalaa fenaande (seven-fold wisdom character)	Partially reuses Romans roots (ceniiɗo/ceniinde, jam); risk is drift from those established senses if translated freshly rather than by conscious reuse.	Require each of the seven adjectives to be checked against Romans TM roots where overlap exists (ceniinde, jamre) before finalizing the full list; the remaining terms are new and Medium risk only.

1.4 Favoritism and the Poor

Available term(s)	Weakness	Recommended strategy
suɓaare yimɓe (favoritism)	Beyond generic partiality, this collides with Fulani society’s own live internal caste stratification (historic rimɓe/maccuɓe distinction) and pastoralist/farmer tensions already flagged in the Romans registry.	Do not translate this doctrine as addressing only rich/poor externally; explicitly extend the teaching to internal Fulani social categories, since a purely economic framing would let the text’s full force go unheard by readers who default to caste or clan categories.
waasɗo / alɗo (poor/rich)	Ordinary socio-economic vocabulary, elevated in doctrinal weight by the favoritism teaching; risk of readers hearing only a class commentary, missing the theological reversal (God’s exaltation of the poor as heirs).	Teach explicitly with 2:5’s heir language; do not let these remain merely descriptive economic terms.
sariya laamu (royal law)	Compound reuses sariya (law) and laamu (kingdom/rule), both Romans-established roots; risk is a reader hearing “kingly law” as another Sharia-adjacent legal code rather than the love-of-neighbor summary James intends.	Gloss explicitly as “the law summed up in love of neighbor,” distinguishing from comprehensive Sharia-style codification, consistent with the law_of_liberty treatment below.
yurmeende (mercy)	Romans package reserves this term for mercy/compassion generally (distinct from Arjunde/grace) — correct reuse, low intrinsic weakness, but must not drift toward Arjunde’s territory or vice versa across three occurrences (2:13, 3:17, 5:11).	Reuse consistently; confirm no accidental substitution with Arjunde anywhere in James.
roniiɗo (heir)	Connects to Romans adoption doctrine’s inheritance-rights sense.	Teach with that fuller inheritance-rights background rather than as a bare legal-inheritance term.

1.5 Taming the Tongue

Available term(s)	Weakness	Recommended strategy
ɗemngal (tongue)	Also means “language/dialect.” Fulfulde speakers are unusually dialect-identity-conscious (Pular vs. Nigerian/Cameroonian Fulfulde vs. Maasina Fulfulde); the teaching risks being misheard as a comment on linguistic/dialect identity rather than speech ethics.	No lexical alternative exists (this is the only natural word for “tongue” as speech-organ). Mitigate entirely through context and framing sentences that make the speech-ethics topic unmistakable at first occurrence (3:1-12), not through word substitution.
yiite / Jahannama (fire/Gehenna)	Jahannama is shared Arabic-derived vocabulary with the standard Islamic hell-term — genuine point of contact, but Islamic eschatology’s differing scope/mechanism (e.g., some strands allow eventual purgation for certain sinners) must not be assumed identical to the NT’s picture.	Use yiite (fire) as the primary descriptive image and treat Jahannama as a secondary cross-reference term requiring explicit differentiation, not silent equivalence.
mbaadi Alla (image of God)	Genuinely new Critical risk not paralleled anywhere in the Romans package (which does not treat imago Dei). Risk of being heard through the lens of Islamic tashbīh prohibition (no physical resemblance to Allah permitted) as claiming humans physically resemble Allah.	Mandatory explicit teaching note at first occurrence (3:9): relational/moral likeness (reason, moral agency, capacity for relationship with God) only, never physical resemblance. This note must precede any use of the term in oral or written teaching materials.
ruuhuuji bonɗi (demons)	Deliberately avoids jinnaaji (jinn), a distinct West African Islamic/folk category (good, neutral, or evil beings) different from the NT’s uniformly fallen demons.	Reuse consistently across 2:19, 3:6, 3:15 without lapsing into jinnaaji at any single occurrence.
barkinde (bless)	Must be kept distinct in sense from barke (marabout-mediated blessing/spiritual power) — a single-letter/single-morpheme visual similarity risk in written Latin-script Fulfulde.	Flag for typesetting/proofreading care in Phase 2 output; confirm the morphological distinction is stable and unambiguous in the target dialect before finalizing.

1.6 Worldliness versus Friendship with God

Available term(s)	Weakness	Recommended strategy
giɗgol aduna / añal Alla (friendship with world/enmity with God)	aduna carries deep Islamic dunyā/ākhirah framing (this-world detachment earns hereafter-reward); James’s relational, covenant-jealousy framing (spiritual adultery against God) is a different logic entirely.	Explicit teaching required: worldliness in James is a relational betrayal of a jealous covenant Lord, not merely improper attachment to temporary things for which detachment earns merit.
Arjunde (grace) — REUSE Romans TM	Retained Critical; 4:6’s humility/pride contrast must preserve the established “apart from merit” force.	Reuse exactly; no new weakness beyond what Romans already documents.
mawnitiiɗo / yankinaaɗo, yankinaade (proud/humble)	Direct extension of Romans’s manaango (God’s glory) vs. teddungal (Pulaaku honor/dignity) distinction; risk that “humble yourselves” is heard as requiring abandonment of legitimate personal/social dignity.	Teach explicitly as reordering ultimate allegiance beneath God’s glory, not erasing legitimate Pulaaku dignity — parallel treatment to Romans’s glory/teddungal handling.
kaɗon Seytaane (resist the devil)	Shared vocabulary with Islamic Shaytan/Iblis — genuine point of contact on the devil’s reality and hostility, but the NT’s framework of the devil’s defeat through Christ’s finished work has no Iblis-narrative parallel.	Teach the defeat-through-Christ framework explicitly; do not assume it is shared ground.
laaɓnude ɓernde (purify the heart)	Extends Romans’s established ceniinde/laaɓal distinction (inward Spirit-wrought purity vs. ritual/ceremonial cleansing, e.g., wuduu).	Draw explicitly on the inward-moral side of that distinction; do not let laaɓnude drift toward a ritual-washing sense.
si Joom yiɗi (if the Lord wills)	Functions almost identically to the ubiquitous Sahelian “In shā’a Allāh” — a strong positive point of contact, but risk of becoming an empty pious formula.	Tie explicitly to Romans’s welsindiigal Alla (providence) entry so the phrase reflects genuine trust in God’s personal care, not habitual speech convention.

1.7 Prayer and Healing

Available term(s)	Weakness	Recommended strategy
mawɓe kawtal (elders of the church)	Reuses kawtal (Romans TM church); risk of being mapped onto Islamic religious-authority roles (imam, marabout, alfa) that carry distinct spiritual-mediation status.	Explicit distinguishing note required: recognized local congregational leadership, not a mediating religious specialist.
wuttude nebam (anoint with oil)	Critical risk: must be categorically distinguished from the widespread marabout-blessed-oil/amulet practice already forbidden throughout the Romans package (barke).	Explicit teaching note mandatory at every occurrence: this is a simple, tangible act of faith-filled care accompanying prayer, not a channel of person-mediated spiritual power.
torgol gomɗinal (prayer of faith)	Reuses torgol wonande (Romans TM intercession) and gomɗinal (Romans TM faith); risk of being heard as a merit-earning or formulaic-incantation practice.	Teach efficacy as God’s responsiveness to faith, not ritual correctness.
ɓamtu (raise up/heal)	Must not be confused with, or share a fixed phrase with, immorde e maayde (Romans TM resurrection, Critical).	Confirm morphological/phrase-level distinctness in Phase 2 output; flag any segment where the two phrases appear close together for extra review.

1.8 Patience and the Lord’s Return

Available term(s)	Weakness	Recommended strategy
ruttitagol Almasiihu / arwa Joom Yeesu (coming of the Lord/parousia)	Critical: Islamic eschatology’s well-developed nuzūl ʿĪsā doctrine (Isa’s return to defeat the Dajjal, break crosses, die naturally, be buried in Medina) is a specific, well-known competing narrative using the same shared figure. This risk is newly surfaced here (Romans does not treat the parousia at comparable length).	Mandatory explicit distinguishing teaching at first occurrence (5:7-8): Christ returns as consummating judge and rewarder of the finished redemptive work already accomplished at the cross and resurrection, not as a figure completing an unfinished earthly mission. Never assume shared ground with nuzūl ʿĪsā.
muñde (patience, eschatological)	Same Pulaaku-munyal resonance/risk as the endurance entry (1.2), now applied to eschatological waiting specifically.	Anchor explicitly to Christ-centered hope of the return, not a purely cultural-stoic virtue of waiting.
Joom Sabaoti / Joom Konuyaaji (Lord of hosts/Sabaoth)	No attested Fulfulde rendering exists for this rare Hebrew-derived military-court title.	Flag for theologian decision; do not silently improvise a permanent rendering.
woondaare / woondude (oath/swear)	Oath-swearing invoking Allah (“wallaahi”) is a deeply ingrained, religiously-sanctioned emphatic-truth speech convention woven into everyday Sahelian speech; James’s prohibition risks being heard as rejecting this convention wholesale.	Teach explicitly as a call to such consistent personal integrity that oaths become unnecessary, not a blanket condemnation of a socially essential speech convention; avoid any rendering that sounds like a legal ban on the wallaahi convention itself.

1.9 Confession and Restoration

Available term(s)	Weakness	Recommended strategy
seedaade bakkaatu (confess sins)	Critical: mainstream Islamic practice has no sacrament of confessing sin to fellow believers (repentance/tawba, istighfār is private, directed to Allah); some regional Sufi contexts have confession to a spiritual guide (shaykh/marabout) as a partial cultural parallel, risking collapse into a marabout-mediated absolution model.	Mandatory explicit framing: mutual confession as a means of grace within the priesthood of all believers; no human mediator is required for forgiveness itself, only for mutual encouragement and accountability.
suddude ɗuuɗi bakkaatuuji (cover a multitude of sins)	Must not be taught as a deeds-based mechanism by which restoring a sinner earns the restorer additional merit (“credit” toward salvation) — echoes the grace doctrine’s guard against reciprocal, barke-adjacent frameworks.	Teach as God’s gracious response flowing from restorative love, not a merit-accumulation transaction.
torgol peewɗo, gollotoongo doole (prayer of the righteous, effective)	Reuses peewal (Romans TM righteousness root); risk of being heard as prayer’s power being an earned/merited force analogous to barke.	Teach efficacy as flowing from God’s responsiveness to faith-filled righteous living, not ritual correctness or merit.
artirde / majjude (turn back/wander)	Standard restoration vocabulary, low intrinsic weakness.	Reuse consistently across 5:19-20; no special fencing required beyond general consistency.
hisde fittaandu e maayde (save a soul from death)	Reuses the provisional hisde verb (see 1.1); same confirmation requirement applies.	Do not finalize independently of the hisde confirmation process — these two entries must be confirmed together.

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2. Missing Vocabulary vs. Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods

2.1 Genuinely missing vocabulary (no existing Fulfulde term at any risk level)

These concepts have no existing crystallized Fulfulde term and require descriptive compounds, all needing theologian/native-speaker confirmation before Phase 2 lock-in:

• The verb “to save” (σῴζω) — only the noun kisal exists in Romans TM; hisde is a new derivation.
• “Faith alone” as a fixed technical phrase — gomɗinal tan is a first-time compound for this curriculum; no prior attestation.
• “Image of God” (imago Dei) — mbaadi Alla is entirely new territory; Romans does not treat this doctrine at all, so there is no partial base to build from.
• “Law of liberty” — sariya timmuɗo jeytaare is a fresh three-part compound; no single attested phrase exists.
• “Crown of life” — no literal-crown equivalent culturally or lexically; handled by descriptive substitution (laamateeri nguurndam).
• “Lord of Hosts / Sabaoth” — no attested rendering in any regional Fulfulde translation; flagged for theologian decision rather than improvisation.
• “Double-minded” (δίψυχος) — ɓerɗe ɗiɗi (“two hearts”) is a serviceable descriptive compound but unattested as a fixed theological idiom; confirm naturalness.
• “Prayer of faith” as a fixed liturgical-sounding phrase — torgol gomɗinal is a compound assembled from two Romans-established roots but not previously combined into this specific phrase.

Recommendation: All of the above must be entered into the updated translation_memory.json (version increment) with explicit “provisional — pending confirmation” flags, per the baseline package’s Translation Memory Load and Enforcement Instructions. None should be treated as final without native-speaker and theologian sign-off, consistent with Fulfulde’s thinner translation-tradition caveat already documented in the Romans package.

2.2 Crowded semantic neighborhoods requiring deliberate fencing

These are cases where Fulfulde has too many plausible near-synonyms or a term shared across multiple frameworks, creating collision risk rather than absence:

Concept	Competing neighbors	Fencing decision
Wisdom	ñeeñal (chosen) vs. hakkille (Pulaaku practical sense) vs. hikma (Islamic divine wisdom)	Use ñeeñal exclusively; always append “from above / of the Spirit” qualifier; never substitute hikma or hakkille as translations of James’s σοφία.
Works/deeds	golle (only viable option, shared with Islamic 'amal)	No fencing possible lexically; fence through mandatory doctrinal framing at every occurrence instead (see 1.1).
Justification	waɗugol peewal (shared exactly with Romans, now bearing two senses)	Fence through mandatory harmonization footnotes distinguishing forensic-declaration sense (Romans) from vindicating-demonstration sense (James), never through a different lexical choice.
Tongue/speech	ɗemngal (also = “language/dialect”)	Fence through contextual framing sentences at first occurrence, not lexical substitution (no synonym for “tongue-as-speech-organ” exists that avoids the dialect sense).
Religion	diine (strong Islamic institutional-religion connotation)	Fence through explicit direct-contrast teaching: James redefines diine away from ritual correctness toward practical compassion/purity; do not assume diine carries this sense unaided.
Blessing/anointing	barkinde (bless, legitimate) vs. barke (marabout-mediated power, forbidden) vs. wuttude nebam (anointing with oil, legitimate act of faith)	Fence through consistent morphological distinction and explicit “never a channel of person-mediated power” notes at every anointing/blessing occurrence.
Fire/hell	yiite (general fire) vs. Jahannama (Islamic-shared hell term)	Use yiite as primary in 3:6; treat Jahannama as a secondary cross-reference requiring explicit scope/mechanism differentiation, not silent equivalence.
Demons/spirits	ruuhuuji bonɗi (chosen) vs. jinnaaji (forbidden, folk-Islamic jinn category) vs. Ruuhu Ceniiɗo (Holy Spirit, Romans TM, must never be confused)	Three-way fence: ruuhuuji bonɗi for NT demons, jinnaaji never used for this concept, Ruuhu Ceniiɗo always in full for the Holy Spirit — all three must remain visually and conceptually distinct in every document.
Patience/endurance	munyal (trial-endurance, Doctrine 2) vs. muñde (eschatological patience, Doctrine 8) — same root family, two doctrinal contexts	Fence by consistently anchoring both to Christ-centered hope (not cultural stoicism) in their respective contexts, while allowing the natural root-sharing to stand, since it is linguistically accurate rather than a collision.
Devil/adversary	Seytaane (shared with Islamic Shaytan/Iblis)	Fence through explicit teaching of the NT’s Christ-defeats-the-devil framework, absent from the Iblis narrative; do not assume shared theological content from the shared name.

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3. Transliteration vs. Paraphrase Decisions

Term	Decision	Rationale
Yakuba (book title)	Transliteration (of the Hebrew/OT name tradition, not the English “James”)	Matches existing Fulfulde/Pular renderings of the patriarch Jacob and creates genuine shared recognition with the Qur’anic Ya’qub; flagged for theologian confirmation of exact regional NT convention given thin attestation.
Almasiihu (Messiah/Christ)	Transliteration — REUSE Romans TM	Established; must not be re-paraphrased.
Joom (Lord)	Native term, not transliteration — REUSE Romans TM	Retained to avoid Laamiiɗo’s Sokoto Caliphate political resonance, per Romans precedent.
Seytaane (devil)	Transliteration (shared Arabic-derived form)	Genuine point of contact retained deliberately, paired with mandatory explicit teaching of the NT’s distinct Christ-defeats-the-devil framework.
Jahannama (Gehenna, secondary term)	Transliteration, used only secondarily alongside the paraphrase yiite	Preserves the genuine point of contact with Islamic hell-vocabulary while yiite (paraphrase: “fire”) carries the primary descriptive weight, avoiding premature equivalence-signaling.
golle (works)	Native term, not paraphrase or neologism	No safer alternative exists; inventing an opaque neologism would obscure the concept for ordinary readers rather than protect against misreading — the risk must be managed through teaching, not word-choice.
mbaadi Alla (image of God)	Paraphrase/descriptive compound, not transliteration (no Arabic/Islamic loanword available for this specific concept)	No shared vocabulary point of contact exists for this Christian-specific doctrine; a plain descriptive compound is safer than any attempt at borrowed vocabulary, given the tashbīh sensitivity.
sariya timmuɗo jeytaare (law of liberty)	Paraphrase/descriptive compound, reusing the transliterated root sariya	sariya itself is a necessary transliteration-derived term (shared root with Sharia) already fixed by Romans; the surrounding qualifier is paraphrase to prevent a Sharia-style total-code reading.
hisde (save, verb)	Native derivation, not transliteration	Derived from the same root as the Romans-established noun kisal; kept native rather than borrowing a foreign verb, but flagged provisional pending confirmation.
Alla ko gooto (God is one)	Direct translation, not transliteration or softened paraphrase	Must render James’s actual Greek meaning plainly, precisely because it is a verbatim-sounding echo of the Tawḥīd confession; softening or paraphrasing away from the direct sense would only compound the risk by seeming evasive. The mandatory theological framing note carries the fencing burden, not the wording.
si Joom yiɗi (if the Lord wills)	Native phrase paralleling but not transliterating “In shā’a Allāh”	Deliberately constructed in native Fulfulde vocabulary (not an Arabic loan-phrase) so the parallel to the ubiquitous Sahelian formula is felt without directly borrowing Islamic liturgical Arabic.
woondaare / woondude (oath/swear)	Native term, not transliteration of “wallaahi”-style Arabic oath vocabulary	Keeps the discussion of oath-taking in native register rather than importing the specific Arabic religious oath-formula terminology, avoiding the appearance of legislating directly against that specific devotional practice.

General principle applied throughout: transliteration is preferred only where (a) an existing regional Christian translation attestation already fixes the form (proper names, Almasiihu, Joom), or (b) the shared vocabulary is a deliberate, controlled point of contact requiring explicit theological fencing (Seytaane, Jahannama, Alla ko gooto). Paraphrase/descriptive compounds are preferred wherever no safe existing loanword exists, or where a loanword would import unwanted doctrinal baggage (mbaadi Alla avoiding any possible Arabic tashbīh-adjacent vocabulary).

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4. Ranked List: Highest-Risk Ambiguities in James

Ranked by combined severity (doctrinal centrality × likelihood of default misreading given the Fulfulde-speaking audience’s Islamic theological formation and Pulaaku cultural categories):

1. golle (works) in James 2:14–26 — Critical. The core passage’s central term is unavoidably identical to the vocabulary of Islamic deeds-weighing soteriology. Highest risk in the entire letter because it sits at the curriculum’s theological anchor point and cannot be lexically fenced, only doctrinally framed.

2. Alla ko gooto (God is one, James 2:19) — Critical. A verbatim-sounding Tawḥīd confession embedded in Scripture itself; readers may hear James validating their existing confession and miss the demons-also-believe-this argument entirely. Requires the single most carefully authored theological note in the curriculum.

3. waɗugol peewal (justification) across James 2:21,24,25 vs. Romans 4 — Critical. The identical Fulfulde phrase for two related-but-distinct senses (vindicating demonstration vs. forensic declaration) creates the classic “James contradicts Paul” reading risk at the lexical level, not just the conceptual level.

4. ruttitagol Almasiihu (the Lord’s coming/parousia, James 5:7-8) — Critical. A specific, well-articulated competing Islamic eschatological narrative (nuzūl ʿĪsā) attaches to the same shared figure (Yeesu/Isa); this risk is new to this curriculum (Romans does not reach this doctrine) and readers with Islamic scholarly formation are likely to know the competing narrative explicitly.

5. seedaade bakkaatu (confess sins to one another, James 5:16) — Critical. No mainstream Islamic parallel for mutual lay confession (repentance is private, to Allah); regional Sufi shaykh-confession practices risk collapsing this into a marabout-mediated absolution model, echoing the barke dynamics already flagged throughout the Romans package.

6. wuttude nebam (anoint with oil, James 5:14) — Critical. Directly adjacent to the widespread, real, and active practice of marabout-blessed oils/amulets sought for barke; without explicit fencing this ritual-adjacent act is the single most likely point of unconscious syncretism in the letter’s Prayer and Healing material.

7. gomɗinal tan (faith alone, James 2:24) — Critical. The sharpest single-verse flashpoint of the whole letter; risk that the verse is quoted by others (in interfaith conversation) as Scripture’s own rejection of sola fide, unless the counterfeit-faith argument is taught alongside it every time.

8. mbaadi Alla (image of God, James 3:9) — Critical. Genuinely new doctrinal territory (imago Dei is untreated in the Romans package) intersecting with the tashbīh prohibition; a single careless phrasing could be heard as claiming physical resemblance to Allah, a serious theological offense.

9. suɓaare yimɓe (favoritism, James 2:1–9) — Critical, compounded by live social reality. Unlike a purely theological risk, this term intersects with an actively lived social structure (rimɓe/maccuɓe caste memory, pastoralist/farmer tension) that could make the teaching either powerfully relevant or quietly resisted depending on how explicitly it is applied beyond generic economic favoritism.

10. hisde / hisde fittaandu e maayde (save, verb; James 2:14, 5:20) — High. Not a doctrinal collision but a foundational attestation gap: an unconfirmed verb-form derivation carrying the weight of the letter’s two “can/does faith save” bookend statements (2:14, 5:20). If left unconfirmed, downstream teaching materials risk resting on an unstable lexical foundation.

11. woondaare / woondude (oath/swear, James 5:12) — High. Risk of the prohibition being heard as a wholesale rejection of the ubiquitous, religiously-sanctioned “wallaahi” speech convention rather than James’s actual, narrower call to integrity so consistent that oaths become needless — a practical/social risk more than a strictly theological one, but likely to generate real listener pushback if mishandled.

12. ɗemngal (tongue, James 3:1–12) — Medium-High. Lower doctrinal stakes than the above but a distinctive Fulfulde-specific ambiguity (dialect-identity homonym) not paralleled in the Romans package at all; worth flagging prominently because it could derail an entire teaching session into an unrelated dialect-identity discussion if not framed carefully at the outset.

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5. Summary Recommendations for Phase 1 → Phase 2 Handoff

1. Increment translation_memory.json with all [NEW] terms listed in 08_core_glossary.md and cross-referenced in bible_term_registry.json (James-specific additions), each flagged per its risk tier.
2. Every Critical-risk term above requires a standing, reusable “theological framing note” authored once and attached at every occurrence across all Phase 2 lesson documents — not re-drafted ad hoc per document, to guarantee consistency (per the baseline’s Theological Consistency Rules).
3. Provisional/unattested derivations (hisde, gomɗinal tan, mbaadi Alla, sariya timmuɗo jeytaare, Joom Sabaoti) must be locked only after native-speaker and theologian confirmation; do not treat any of them as final glossary entries before that review, consistent with the baseline package’s protocol for Fulfulde’s thinner translation tradition.
4. No lexical fencing solution exists for golle (works) or ɗemngal (tongue); both require teaching-level fencing built into lesson structure rather than glossary-level substitution — flag this explicitly for curriculum writers, not only translators.
5. Maintain absolute non-negotiable exact reuse of all Romans-TM-sourced terms (gomɗinal, waɗugol peewal, peewal jibinaangal, Arjunde, Joom, Almasiihu, kawtal, ceniiɗo/ceniinde, bakkaatu, yurmeende, welsindiigal Alla, immorde e maayde) — James introduces no grounds for deviation from any of these.