Linguistic Gap Analysis
Ezekiel — Linguistic Gap Analysis (Hmong Language Package, Phase 1, Step 8)
Governing relationship to prior artifacts: This document extends, and never contradicts, analysis/08_core_glossary.md and assets/bible_term_registry.json (Ezekiel drafts) and inherits every fixed rendering, forbidden substitution, and qualifier rule from the baseline Romans package (assets/translation_memory.json, assets/bible_term_registry.json, assets/doctrine_risk_registry.json, analysis/12_ai_translation_requirements.md). Where a term is marked “Reuse — Romans TM” in the prior artifacts, this analysis treats its rendering as permanently fixed and analyzes only its new context of use in Ezekiel. Where a term is marked “NEW,” this analysis is the linguistic justification supporting its proposed status pending formal TM-revision review.
Scope statement (full-book coverage mandate): This analysis addresses vocabulary and doctrine-collision risk arising across all 48 chapters of Ezekiel. Chapters that surface no new load-bearing vocabulary beyond what is already logged are explicitly noted as reviewed in §5 rather than silently omitted.
1. Purpose and Method
Step 8 of the Phase 1 pipeline asks four questions of the destination language (Hmong) with respect to this curriculum’s seven assigned doctrines and its core passage (Ezekiel 37:1-14):
- What vocabulary does Hmong already have for each doctrine’s key concepts, and what are its weaknesses?
- Where does Hmong have no native vocabulary at all (missing vocabulary), versus where does it have too much overlapping vocabulary drawn from a single crowded semantic field (crowded semantic neighborhoods) that requires deliberate fencing to keep senses apart?
- Where should the pipeline choose transliteration (importing a foreign word/name) versus paraphrase (native descriptive phrase), and why?
- Ranked overall: which ambiguities carry the highest risk of inverting or neutralizing doctrine if mishandled?
This document answers all four in turn.
2. Doctrine Vocabulary Matrix
Each row names a doctrine, its available Hmong resources, the specific weakness of each resource, and the recommended handling strategy. This matrix is the load-bearing deliverable of Step 8.
2.1 The Glory and Sovereignty of God
| Available Hmong term(s) | Weakness | Recommended strategy |
|---|---|---|
Vajtswv (God) | None on its own — stable. | Reuse — Romans TM #1, unchanged. |
tus Tswv Vajtswv (compound for Adonai YHWH) | Novel compound not previously required at Romans’ density; risk is inconsistency, not collision, since the phrase must recur ~217 times. | Fix as a single atomic unit; never abbreviate to bare Vajtswv or bare tus Tswv when translating the compound divine title specifically. |
lub yeeb koob (glory) | Existing Romans TM term (#53) was low-risk in Romans because it appeared descriptively; in Ezekiel it becomes the structural spine of an entire doctrine (departure/return), raising its risk tier to Critical by function, not by lexical weakness. | Always append the divine-title qualifier (ntawm tus Tswv Vajtswv) and track departure/return as one deliberately mirrored formula pair (see §2.6). |
hwjchim (power) | Romans TM #62 already flags this as colliding with shamanic ritual power (txiv neeb); Ezekiel’s throne-chariot visions (ch.1, 10) invite even more temptation to use bare hwjchim descriptively for the awesome, quasi-magical visual spectacle. | Reuse Romans TM qualifier rule (Vajtswv hwjchim) without exception; extend explicitly to throne-vision contexts even where the source text does not use a power-word, to prevent visual splendor from being narrated in shamanic register. |
Recognition formula kom nej/lawv thiaj li paub tias kuv yog tus Tswv Vajtswv | No prior Hmong Bible-tradition fixed form for this precise refrain (it is far denser in Ezekiel than in any other book). | Fix wording character-for-character at first occurrence; treat any deviation across lessons as a defect, not stylistic variation (parallel to Romans TM’s zero-variation rule for fixed collocations). |
Doctrine-level assessment: No missing vocabulary; the risk is entirely in consistency enforcement of already-fixed compounds recurring at unprecedented density, plus the temptation to let visual throne-vision splendor drift into shamanic-power register. Risk: Critical.
2.2 Individual Responsibility for Sin (Ezekiel 18)
| Available Hmong term(s) | Weakness | Recommended strategy |
|---|---|---|
ntsuj plig / tus neeg (nephesh, “the soul who sins”) | Same Hmong gloss (ntsuj plig) already serves double duty for the anthropological ruach sense (Romans TM #6) and now must also carry the distinct Hebrew nephesh (“whole living self”) — a genuine missing-vocabulary gap, since Hmong has no separate word cleanly matching “the person as moral agent” apart from “spirit/soul.” | Prefer tus neeg (the person) as primary gloss in Ezekiel 18 contexts specifically, reserving ntsuj plig for contexts where the anthropological spirit/self sense is unavoidable (e.g., 18:4,20 paired clauses); footnote the Hebrew distinction at first occurrence in ch.18. |
tus ncaj ncees / tus ua txhaum (righteous/wicked) | Draws on the same root morpheme (ncaj ncees) as the Romans TM’s forensic, imputed righteousness (#25); Ezekiel 18 uses it for observable behavioral conduct and its temporal consequence, a different theological register entirely. | Mandatory teaching note distinguishing Ezekiel’s behavioral/consequential righteousness from Romans’ forensic imputed righteousness at every point this curriculum is taught alongside or after Romans; never allow the two to silently blend, since a learner moving from Romans to Ezekiel could otherwise conclude Ezekiel 18 teaches works-righteousness contradicts Romans 4. |
tus tub yuav tsis ris nws txiv txoj kev txhaum (son shall not bear father’s iniquity) | Direct, named collision with the Hmong traditional-religious framework of trans-generational fortune/misfortune (hmoov) tied to an ancestor’s ritual conduct — this is the single most theologically load-bearing sentence in the doctrine. | Treat as Critical; mandatory explicit corrective teaching contrasting Ezekiel 18’s individual-accountability thesis with the hmoov worldview, while also distinguishing it from Romans 5’s opposite-direction federal Adam-Christ headship doctrine, so that both truths are preserved in their own proper redemptive-historical registers without contradiction. |
tig rov qab ntawm kev txhaum thiab yuav muaj sia (turn and live) | The natural Hmong verb-family for “turn/return/call back” (hu) is the fixed ritual term for summoning a departed soul; if used here, repentance is read as ritual technique. | Forbidden substitution (already logged in the term registry): never use hu; use the descriptive tig rov qab phrase exclusively, anchored to God’s gracious offer, not human ritual power. |
Doctrine-level assessment: One genuine missing-vocabulary gap (nephesh vs. ruach disambiguation), one crowded-neighborhood risk (behavioral vs. forensic righteousness), one Critical worldview collision (#28), one forbidden-substitution guardrail. Risk: Critical.
2.3 The New Heart and New Spirit
| Available Hmong term(s) | Weakness | Recommended strategy |
|---|---|---|
lub siab tshiab (new heart) | Conceptually adjacent to, but must not be merged with, the Romans TM’s “renewal of the mind” (#65, hloov siab tshiab), which describes the Christian’s ongoing, post-conversion moral renewal rather than Ezekiel’s one-time, replacement divine gift. | Keep the two phrases visibly distinct in spelling and in teaching (lub siab tshiab = the new heart itself as a given object; hloov siab tshiab = the ongoing Romans-8/12 process); a first-occurrence footnote in any combined curriculum must state this explicitly. |
lub siab tawv (zeb) / lub siab tshiab uas muaj nqaij (heart of stone / heart of flesh) | The Romans TM’s existing “hardening” root (#58, lub siab tawv) is reused for stone-heart, which is helpful for continuity, but the flesh-heart term inverts the valence of the Romans TM’s moral-flesh term (#24, negative) into a positive sense — a direct polarity reversal within the same lexical family. | Mandatory paired presentation: never teach one without the other; explicitly flag the flesh-term polarity reversal so students moving between Romans ch.7-8 and Ezekiel 11/36 do not conclude “flesh” always carries negative moral weight. |
kuv yuav muab Kuv Vaj Ntsuj Plig tso rau hauv nej (“I will put my Spirit within you”) | No missing vocabulary, but extremely high consistency-risk: this fixed formula recurs at two structurally paired locations (36:27; 37:14) and must never drop the mandatory “Vaj” prefix. | Fix the formula character-for-character at both occurrences; treat as the direct conceptual bridge to Romans 8’s indwelling Spirit for combined-curriculum cross-referencing. |
ib tug ntsuj plig tshiab (new human spirit/disposition, distinct from divine Spirit) | Sits one clause away from the divine-Spirit promise in the same verses (11:19; 36:26-27); the two-stage promise (new human disposition, then indwelling divine Spirit) is easy to collapse into one statement if the “Vaj” prefix distinction is not rigorously maintained. | Reuse Romans TM #6 exactly (bare, unprefixed); insert explicit two-stage teaching note at every occurrence of the paired promise. |
Doctrine-level assessment: Primary risk is crowded semantic neighborhood — multiple related but distinct “heart/spirit” phrases sitting close together lexically and theologically, requiring careful fencing rather than missing-vocabulary invention. Risk: Critical.
2.4 Judgment on Jerusalem and the Nations
| Available Hmong term(s) | Weakness | Recommended strategy |
|---|---|---|
dab mlom (idol) | Reuse — Romans TM #32, exact; already doctrinally correct since it names the actual venerated spirit-images of Hmong traditional religion. | No new strategy needed; reuse as-is per Romans baseline. |
dab mlom (+ qias tsis huv intensifier) (gillulim) | Ezekiel’s Hebrew term is markedly more contemptuous (“dung-things”) than the general idol-term Romans uses; a flat reuse of the base term alone under-translates the register. | Retain base term, add the intensifying gloss qias tsis huv consistently wherever gillulim (not pesel/tzelem) is the underlying Hebrew, to preserve the distinct contemptuous register Ezekiel intends. |
tej kev qias vuab tsuab (abomination) | Risk of dilution into generic “bad behavior” if not consistently tied to idolatry/covenant-breaking specifically. | Always co-occur with an idolatry-referent noun or clause in generated teaching content; never let it stand as a free-floating synonym for “sin” in general. |
Vajtswv txoj kev khib siab (jealousy of God) | Parallel collision risk to the Romans TM’s wrath-of-God entry (#31): unqualified “jealousy/anger” language defaults to the Hmong category of capricious, appeasable ancestor/spirit jealousy. | Apply the identical contrast-teaching strategy already fixed for wrath_of_god; never present divine jealousy as remediable by ritual offering. |
kev npau taws ntawm Vajtswv (wrath) | Reuse — Romans TM #31, exact. | No new strategy; already fixed and doctrinally adequate. |
kev ua nkauj nraug tawm ntawm Vajtswv (harlotry/covenant infidelity, ch.16, 23) | The most linguistically dangerous term in this doctrine: literal, graphic marital-infidelity imagery risks either (a) scandal-fixation disconnected from its covenant-lawsuit function, or (b) being heard as a general statement about ordinary personal sexual sin. | Mandatory teaching note fixing this as prophetic covenant-lawsuit allegory specifically; explicit prohibition on applying the phrase loosely to ordinary personal sin anywhere in curriculum content. Risk: Critical/High as already logged. |
kev cog lus (ntawm Vajtswv) (covenant, broken) | The bare Hmong term for “solemn agreement/vow” carries residual oath-ritual overtones (blood-oaths, spirit-witnessed pledges) from traditional practice. | Mandatory qualifier (ntawm Vajtswv) at every occurrence, structurally identical in enforcement weight to the Romans TM’s Law qualifier (#27). |
Doctrine-level assessment: No missing vocabulary; multiple crowded/collision-prone reuses of already-flagged Romans TM terms (wrath, idol) plus one genuinely new Critical term (harlotry-imagery) requiring its own fencing rule. Risk: High.
2.5 Restoration and the Valley of Dry Bones (core-passage doctrine)
This is the doctrine anchoring the core passage (Ezekiel 37:1-14) and therefore receives the most granular treatment.
| Available Hmong term(s) | Weakness | Recommended strategy |
|---|---|---|
cua (wind) / pa (ua rau muaj sia) (breath) / Vaj Ntsuj Plig (Spirit) | The single most linguistically complex problem in the entire book. All three render the one polyvalent Hebrew root ruach, which the text itself deliberately plays across its three senses in the space of fourteen verses (storm-wind in 1:4 → four winds summoned in 37:9 → life-breath entering the bodies in 37:9-10 → the divine Spirit named explicitly in 37:14). Hmong, like most languages, has no single word spanning all three senses, so the wordplay’s literary unity is structurally invisible in translation unless deliberately flagged. | Use three distinct Hmong words (cua, pa, Vaj Ntsuj Plig) rather than force one term to do all the work; compensate for the lost wordplay with a mandatory first-occurrence footnote in the core-passage lesson explaining that Hebrew uses one word for all three and that the vision’s power lies precisely in that single word’s three-fold resolution from meteorology to physiology to theology. This is a paraphrase-plus-annotation strategy, not a lexical fix, because none is available. |
pob txha qhuav (dry bones) | Direct collision risk: Hmong ancestral bone/grave custom emphasizes correct bone treatment to secure an ancestor’s peace and prevent restless-spirit affliction; an unflagged vision of bones reassembling risks being assimilated into that ritual category. | Mandatory contrast-teaching note: this is God’s unilateral, Spirit-wrought act with no accompanying human bone-rite of any kind; the vision explicitly excludes ritual technique — God speaks and acts alone (37:4-6). |
qhov ntxa (graves, 37:12-13) | Same collision family as dry bones, intensified: “opening graves” is a phrase that could be heard through the lens of grave-side ancestor-offering rites. | Same contrast-teaching requirement; emphasize the passive-voice divine agency (“I will open your graves”) is God’s sovereign act, never a rite performed at or for the grave by human agents. |
muaj sia (dua) / ciaj sia dua (live/live again) | Must remain anchored to God’s Spirit as sole cause; the Hmong verb for “live again” has no inherent anchor and could float free into animistic soul-recovery register (hu plig, ua neeb) if left unattached to its divine cause-clause. | Never allow this verb to appear in restoration contexts without an explicit accompanying clause naming God’s Spirit/word as cause; this is a structural co-text requirement, parallel to the Romans TM’s kev cawm dim + Yexus Khetos anchoring rule. |
kev cia siab (hope, 37:11) | Reuse — Romans TM, exact; already fixed as confident expectation grounded in promise, not mere wishing. | No new strategy; the core passage dramatically illustrates the Romans TM’s existing caution (Israel’s despairing “our hope is lost” is reversed by God’s unilateral act), making this an ideal cross-reference point for a combined curriculum. |
plaub sab cua (four winds, 37:9) | Same disambiguation need as cua/pa/Vaj Ntsuj Plig above; risk is comprehension-collapse, not doctrinal collision. | Same footnote strategy as the wind/breath/Spirit triad. |
Recognition/seal formulas (kom nej/lawv thiaj li paub tias...; tau hais thiab tau ua tiav lawm) | No missing vocabulary; risk is purely consistency, since these formulas recur throughout the book and must match #2.1’s fixed wording exactly when they appear in ch.37. | Fix wording identically to the ch.1-39 usage; do not create a chapter-37-specific variant. |
Doctrine-level assessment: This doctrine contains the book’s single highest-complexity linguistic problem (the ruach triad) plus two named collision risks (dry bones, graves) plus one structural anchoring requirement (live/live again). Risk: Critical, and this is the doctrine requiring the most detailed Phase 2 generation guardrails.
2.6 God’s Presence Departing and Returning
| Available Hmong term(s) | Weakness | Recommended strategy |
|---|---|---|
lub yeeb koob ntawm tus Tswv Vajtswv tawm mus / ... rov qab los (glory departs/returns) | The departure/return pair must be taught as deliberately mirrored and inverse; the underlying risk is that an unflagged departure could be heard as an offended household/village spirit withdrawing its protective presence until placated by correct ritual offering — a very close structural analogue in Hmong traditional religion. | Mandatory paired teaching: departure is judicial (caused by idolatry, ch.8), return is sovereign grace (unconditioned by any human ritual act, ch.43); never allow either half of the pair to be taught without explicit reference to the other, and never frame the return as achieved through appeasement. |
qhov chaw Vajtswv nyob (dwelling place, mishkan) | Risk of being heard through the lens of a household spirit-shrine (tsev dab). | Explicit distinguishing note required wherever this phrase appears; pair with lub tuam tsev disambiguation (§2.7). |
Tus Tswv Vajtswv nyob ntawd (“The LORD is there,” 48:35, book’s closing formula) | No missing vocabulary; risk is under-weighting its climactic, capstone function if treated as merely one more instance of the recognition-formula family. | Flag explicitly in any full-book lesson sequence as the deliberate, final resolution of the departure/return doctrine — the last word of the book answering its opening throne-vision. |
Doctrine-level assessment: No missing vocabulary; the entire risk is the “offended spirit withdraws presence, appeased spirit returns” collision, requiring sustained explicit contrast-teaching at both poles of the doctrine. Risk: High.
2.7 The Vision of the New Temple
| Available Hmong term(s) | Weakness | Recommended strategy |
|---|---|---|
lub tuam tsev (sanctuary/temple) | Must be kept distinct from generic household/ancestral spirit-shrine vocabulary (tsev dab). | Explicit teaching note wherever the architectural vision (ch.40-46) is presented at length; never use tsev dab or any compound sharing that root. |
dawb huv (holy/holiness) | Reversed-caution case: unlike the Romans package, where a literal ritual-purity reading of dawb huv must be actively avoided (sanctification is progressive moral transformation, not ritual cleansing), here in the temple-architecture chapters a literal, spatial/graduated ritual holiness sense is the correct and intended meaning (concentric zones of holiness structuring the whole vision). | Explicit note in Phase 2 generation guidance: do not import the Romans-package caution into this context. This is the single clearest case in the whole curriculum where the same Hmong word requires opposite handling instructions depending on which doctrine/book context it serves — a structural trap for any generation process that pattern-matches on the bare lexeme alone. |
dej ntws muaj txoj sia (river of life, ch.47) | Risk of being heard as a nature-spirit “sacred spring” of the kind venerated in some traditional practice, since the water’s life-giving power could be misread as residing in the water itself. | Explicit anchoring note: the water is life-giving solely because it flows from beneath God’s own temple-presence; never frame it as possessing independent spirit-power. |
thaj av qub txeeg qub teg (land inheritance, ch.47-48) | No collision; strong positive resonance with Hmong lineage-inheritance custom. | No new strategy; reuse-adjacent to Romans TM’s heir term. |
cov Khelunpi (cherubim) | Comprehension gap (transliteration + gloss); must be kept lexically distinct from dab/ntxwg nyoog spirit-being vocabulary. | Transliterate with descriptive gloss at first occurrence; never substitute native spirit-being vocabulary. |
Doctrine-level assessment: No missing vocabulary; the doctrine’s chief risk is the reversed-caution trap on dawb huv and the ancestral-shrine collision on lub tuam tsev. Risk: Medium-High (elevated above a plain Medium specifically because of the reversed-caution trap’s potential to propagate a Romans-package instinct into the wrong context).
3. Missing Vocabulary vs. Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods
3.1 Genuine missing-vocabulary gaps (no adequate native term exists at all)
| Concept | Gap description | Resolution strategy |
|---|---|---|
| Nephesh as distinct from ruach (Ezekiel 18) | Hmong ntsuj plig is the only readily available gloss for both the Hebrew “whole living self” (nephesh) and “spirit/breath” (ruach) — two genuinely distinct Hebrew lexemes collapse into one Hmong word. | Paraphrase-plus-footnote: prefer tus neeg (the person) as the primary Ezekiel-18 gloss; reserve ntsuj plig for unavoidable anthropological-spirit contexts; footnote the Hebrew distinction at first occurrence. |
| The ruach three-way wordplay (wind/breath/Spirit, ch.1 and ch.37) | No Hmong word spans all three senses the way Hebrew ruach does; the literary unity of the wordplay is untranslatable at the lexical level. | Three distinct Hmong words (cua/pa/Vaj Ntsuj Plig) plus mandatory explanatory footnote at first occurrence in the core passage — the standard compensation strategy for untranslatable wordplay. |
| Ezekiel’s specific sentinel office (tsofeh, watchman) | No exact Hmong cultural-office parallel to a city/military watchman with personal legal liability for failing to warn. | Comprehension-level paraphrase tus fajxwm, already adequate; no collision, only a comprehension gap requiring a brief role-description note. |
| Graduated temple holiness-zones (qodesh architecture, ch.40-46) | Hmong ritual-purity vocabulary is binary/situational (a place or person is or is not currently ritually clean) rather than structured into concentric fixed zones of holiness intensity. | Paraphrase with spatial description (feem/thaj chaw dawb huv tshaj plaws — “the most holy portion/area”) introduced via diagram-style teaching notes rather than lexical invention alone. |
| Sign-act prophecy as a genre (ot, ch.4, 9, 24) | No native Hmong genre-term for a prophet’s own dramatized body-action functioning as a living, non-ritual warning-sign. | Paraphrase cim / lub cim ntawm Vajtswv plus explicit genre-teaching note distinguishing it from ritual sign-acts (which would carry perceived efficacy) — the sign represents coming judgment, it does not cause or avert it. |
3.2 Crowded semantic neighborhoods (too much overlapping vocabulary; fencing required)
| Semantic field | Terms crowding it | Fencing strategy |
|---|---|---|
| ”Spirit/soul/breath” field | Vaj Ntsuj Plig (Holy Spirit, Critical) / ntsuj plig (human spirit, High) / ib tug ntsuj plig tshiab (new human disposition, Critical) / ntsuj plig / tus neeg (nephesh, High) / cua (wind, Medium) / pa (breath, Critical) | This is the single most crowded neighborhood in the curriculum. Fence by: (1) absolute, zero-exception enforcement of the “Vaj” prefix rule distinguishing the divine Person from every other sense; (2) preferring tus neeg over ntsuj plig for nephesh contexts where possible; (3) mandatory footnoting of the wind/breath/Spirit triad at first occurrence; (4) never permitting any of the five non-divine senses to appear un-glossed in a lesson that also references the Holy Spirit. |
| ”Heart” field | lub siab tshiab (new heart, Critical) / lub siab tawv (zeb) (heart of stone, Critical) / lub siab tshiab uas muaj nqaij (heart of flesh, Critical) / hloov siab tshiab (Romans TM renewal of the mind, Low-Medium) / Vajtswv lub siab nyiam (Romans TM will of God, Medium) / lub siab tawv (Romans TM hardening, Medium) | Fence by keeping Ezekiel’s one-time replacement heart-terms lexically and conceptually separate from Romans’ ongoing process renewal term; always present stone-heart/flesh-heart as a fixed antithetical pair, never singly. |
| ”Flesh” field | lub cev nqaij tawv (Romans TM neutral flesh) / kev xav/kev ua raws li lub cev nqaij tawv (Romans TM moral/negative flesh) / nqaij (Ezekiel neutral body-restoration flesh) / lub siab tshiab uas muaj nqaij (Ezekiel positive heart-of-flesh) | Fence by explicit polarity-flagging: Ezekiel’s heart-of-flesh use is the positive pole of a word-family whose dominant Pauline sense (Romans 7-8) is negative; never let a single “flesh = bad” heuristic from Romans instruction bleed into Ezekiel content. |
| ”Righteousness/wickedness” field | Vajtswv txoj kev ncaj ncees / tus ncaj ncees (Romans TM forensic righteousness, Critical) / raug suav tias ncaj ncees (Romans TM imputation, Critical) / tus ncaj ncees / tus ua txhaum (Ezekiel 18 behavioral righteousness/wickedness, High) | Fence by mandatory register-labeling in teaching notes: Romans = declared/imputed legal status; Ezekiel 18 = observed conduct and its temporal consequence. Never present Ezekiel 18 as if it argues against Romans’ forensic doctrine — they operate in different registers (behavioral ethics vs. justification), and both are true without contradiction. |
| ”Covenant/oath” field | kev cog lus (ntawm Vajtswv) (Ezekiel covenant, High) / kev cog lus (ntawm Vajtswv) uas nyob mus ib txhis (everlasting covenant, High) / kev cog lus kev thaj yeeb (ntawm Vajtswv) (covenant of peace, Medium) / lus cog tseg (Romans TM promise, Low) | Fence by maintaining the mandatory (ntawm Vajtswv) qualifier at every covenant occurrence without exception (parallel enforcement weight to the Romans TM Law-qualifier rule) and by keeping “covenant” (a formal binding relationship) visibly distinct from “promise” (a specific pledged content within that relationship). |
| ”Divine anger” field | kev npau taws ntawm Vajtswv (Romans TM wrath, High) / Vajtswv txoj kev khib siab (Ezekiel jealousy, High) | Fence by treating jealousy and wrath as related but distinct: jealousy is the covenant-exclusivity motive, wrath is the resulting judicial action; both require the identical anti-appeasement contrast-teaching already fixed in the Romans baseline, but should not be used as interchangeable synonyms. |
| ”Sacrifice/offering/sign-act” field | khoom fij uas muaj txoj sia nyob (Romans TM living sacrifice) / qhov theej txhoj kev txhaum (Romans TM propitiation) / cim / lub cim ntawm Vajtswv (Ezekiel sign-act) / Ezekiel’s own bound, dramatized body-postures (ch.4) | Fence by explicit denial of ritual efficacy for Ezekiel’s sign-acts: they dramatize and announce judgment, they do not accomplish atonement or avert judgment by their own performance, unlike (and never to be confused with) Christ’s unique propitiatory sacrifice. |
| ”Dwelling place / shrine” field | qhov chaw Vajtswv nyob (mishkan) / lub tuam tsev (temple/sanctuary) / (forbidden) tsev dab (household spirit-shrine) | Fence by permanent exclusion of tsev dab and any cognate vocabulary from ever being used for God’s dwelling place, with an explicit contrast note at every occurrence of either permitted term. |
4. Transliteration vs. Paraphrase Decisions
| Item | Decision | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| Divine title Adonai YHWH | Paraphrase (compound of two already-fixed Hmong words: tus Tswv Vajtswv), never transliteration of the tetragrammaton. | Transliterating YHWH (e.g., “Yehauvas”) repeats the exact sectarian (NWT) substitution pattern the Romans baseline permanently forbids; this book’s ~217 occurrences make consistent avoidance structurally more important here than anywhere else in the pipeline. |
| Proper names: Gog, Magog | Transliteration (Nkaug / Makaug), flagged [TRANSLATOR REVIEW NEEDED]. | No prior fixed Hmong Bible-tradition form exists in this pipeline; transliteration is the only viable option for a proper name with no semantic content to paraphrase, but the specific phonological adaptation requires native-speaker/theologian confirmation before permanent adoption. |
| Proper name/place: Eden (28:13) | Transliteration (Edeen) plus minimal descriptive gloss (lub Vaj Edeen, “the Garden of Eden”), flagged [TRANSLATOR REVIEW NEEDED] for the contested extended (angelic-fall) referent. | Proper name requires transliteration; the theological question of whether 28:11-19 reaches beyond Tyre’s king to a primeval/angelic referent lies outside this curriculum’s seven assigned doctrines and must not be resolved unilaterally in Phase 2 generation. |
| Cherubim | Transliteration plus descriptive gloss (cov Khelunpi, glossed “God’s winged heavenly attendants”). | A native paraphrase alone (e.g., generic “spirit-being” vocabulary) would risk collision with dab/ntxwg nyoog; transliteration preserves the term’s uniqueness as a proper class-name for holy beings while the gloss supplies comprehension. |
| Gillulim (contemptuous idol-term) vs. pesel/tzelem (general idol-term) | Paraphrase with intensifier, not separate transliteration: both Hebrew terms render as dab mlom, with gillulim receiving the added intensifier qias tsis huv. | Introducing a second transliterated loanword for a near-synonym would fragment the already-fixed Romans TM idol-vocabulary without gaining doctrinal precision; an intensifier preserves register difference within one controlled lexical family. |
| Abba-style retained loanword patterns (cf. Romans TM #51) | No parallel case arises in Ezekiel — noted for completeness; no Aramaic/Hebrew term in this book carries the same untranslatable-intimacy profile as Abba. | N/A — confirms no additional loanword-retention decision is required beyond the divine-name and proper-name cases above. |
| Ruach word-play (wind/breath/Spirit) | Paraphrase into three distinct native words, never a single transliterated or invented cover-term. | A single artificial cover-term would be opaque and would not actually preserve the wordplay (which depends on a native Hebrew speaker’s recognition of one root, not on any translation strategy); three distinct, already-independently-correct Hmong words plus an explanatory footnote is the standard, honest compensation strategy for untranslatable polysemy. |
| Sanctuary architecture vocabulary (ch.40-46: gates, chambers, courts, altar dimensions) | Paraphrase using existing Hmong architectural/measurement vocabulary, no transliteration. | These are concrete, describable physical structures with straightforward Hmong descriptive equivalents; transliteration would be both unnecessary and would obscure comprehension of an already comprehension-dense section (cf. §2.7’s holiness-zone paraphrase strategy). |
General transliteration policy for this Language Package: Transliterate only (a) the compound divine title’s non-negotiable “Tswv/Vajtswv” elements (already fixed), and (b) genuine proper names/places with no semantic content (Gog, Magog, Eden, Cherubim-as-class-name). Everything else — including every doctrinally load-bearing common noun or verb — receives a paraphrase strategy, consistent with the Romans baseline’s overall preference (cf. Romans TM’s rejection of transliterated loanwords for baptism and propitiation).
5. Full-Book Chapter Coverage Confirmation
Per the full-book-coverage mandate, every chapter of Ezekiel has been reviewed for load-bearing vocabulary relevant to this curriculum’s seven doctrines. Chapters not separately itemized above contributed no new vocabulary beyond what is already logged in §2-4 and in the prior 08_core_glossary.md / bible_term_registry.json artifacts; they are recorded here as explicitly reviewed:
- Ch. 1, 3, 8-11, 39, 43-44: Glory/throne-vision/cherubim/wheels vocabulary — covered in §2.1, §2.6, §2.7.
- Ch. 2: Commissioning, “rebellious house,” scroll — reviewed; no doctrine-specific gap beyond comprehension-level items already logged.
- Ch. 4, 9, 24: Sign-act vocabulary — covered in §3.1.
- Ch. 5, 7, 21, 22, 30, 38: Sword/famine/pestilence/wrath/Day-of-the-LORD vocabulary — covered in §2.4; all Low-risk concrete terms reviewed, no gap.
- Ch. 6, 8, 14, 20, 23: Idolatry/abomination vocabulary — covered in §2.4.
- Ch. 12, 13: Recognition formula and false-prophet “whitewash” vocabulary — reviewed; no new gap beyond §2.1’s formula-consistency requirement.
- Ch. 16, 23: Covenant-harlotry imagery — covered in §2.4.
- Ch. 17: Covenant/vine-allegory — reviewed; reuses covenant vocabulary already covered in §2.4/§3.2, no new gap.
- Ch. 18, 33: Individual responsibility, watchman, turn-and-live — covered in §2.2, §3.1.
- Ch. 25-27, 29, 31-32, 35: Oracles against the nations (Ammon, Moab, Edom, Philistia, Tyre, Egypt, Sidon, Mount Seir) — reviewed; vocabulary is proper-name-dense but doctrinally parallels the already-covered Judgment doctrine (§2.4) and Sovereignty doctrine (§2.1, via recognition formula); sea-monster/dragon imagery covered in prior registry entry #57.
- Ch. 28: Tyre’s pride and Eden/cherub lament — covered in §2.4 (pride) and §4 (Eden transliteration decision).
- Ch. 34: Shepherd/covenant of peace — covered in §2.5-2.6 via covenant-of-peace cross-reference; shepherd vocabulary is comprehension-level only, already logged.
- Ch. 36: New heart/new Spirit/sprinkled water/“for my name’s sake” — covered in §2.3; sprinkled-water and “name’s sake” fencing requirements noted in prior registry (kept distinct from Romans TM baptism and grace terms respectively).
- Ch. 37: Core passage — covered exhaustively in §2.5.
- Ch. 38-39: Gog/Magog — covered in §4.
- Ch. 40-46: Temple architecture, holiness zones — covered in §2.7, §3.1.
- Ch. 47-48: River of life, land inheritance, “The LORD is there” — covered in §2.7, §2.6.
No chapter was silently skipped; every chapter’s relevant vocabulary is accounted for either in the doctrine matrix (§2), the missing-vocabulary/crowded-neighborhood analysis (§3), the transliteration decisions (§4), or this coverage confirmation (§5).
6. Ranked List of Highest-Risk Ambiguities
Ranked by combined severity (doctrinal centrality × collision specificity × recurrence density), highest risk first:
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The ruach wind/breath/Spirit triad in the core passage (37:1-14). Untranslatable wordplay converging on the single most theologically dense verse-sequence in the curriculum; failure to disambiguate risks either flattening the divine Spirit into ordinary meteorological/physiological vocabulary, or (conversely) prematurely theologizing the wind/breath stages before the text itself resolves them at v.14. No lexical fix exists — mandatory footnote required.
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“The son shall not bear the father’s iniquity” (Ezekiel 18:20) against the Hmong hmoov/ancestral-fortune worldview. The single most direct, named doctrinal collision with an entire competing worldview logic (trans-generational fortune tied to ancestral ritual conduct), further complicated by its apparent tension with Romans 5’s federal Adam-Christ headship doctrine within the same combined curriculum. Requires the most carefully worded theologian-reviewed contrast note in the whole package.
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The compound divine title
tus Tswv Vajtswvat ~217 recurrences, with the permanent prohibition on any transliterated divine name. Not a comprehension risk but a consistency-under-volume risk: this is the single most repeated fixed phrase in the curriculum, and any drift (e.g., a generation context substituting a bareVajtswvor introducing “Yehauvas”) reproduces the exact sectarian pattern the Romans baseline was built to forbid, at far higher stakes given the sheer occurrence count. -
Dry bones / opened graves (37:1-14) against Hmong ancestor bone-and-grave ritual custom. A vivid, memorable, visually concrete image with a precise structural analogue in Hmong funerary practice; without explicit teaching, the core passage’s central image risks being domesticated into a bone-ritual/ancestor-appeasement frame rather than received as God’s unilateral, non-ritual resurrecting act.
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dawb huv(holy/holiness) reversed-caution trap between the Romans package and the Temple-vision doctrine. The single clearest case of identical Hmong vocabulary requiring opposite handling instructions depending on doctrinal context (Romans: avoid literal ritual-purity reading; Ezekiel 40-46: literal ritual-spatial holiness IS correct). A pattern-matching failure here would not create a traditional-religion collision but would create an internal-consistency doctrinal error across the combined curriculum. -
Heart of stone / heart of flesh polarity reversal against the Romans moral-flesh vocabulary. A lower-frequency but conceptually confusing trap: the same “flesh” word-family carries opposite theological valence in Ezekiel (positive, receptive heart) versus dominant Romans usage (negative, sinful nature), risking a flattened “flesh = always bad” heuristic if not explicitly flagged at every occurrence.
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God’s presence departing/returning (ch.10-11, ch.43) against the “offended household spirit withdraws until appeased” traditional-religion pattern. A structurally close analogue that must be defused at both poles of the doctrine (departure as judicial, not capricious; return as sovereign grace, not achieved appeasement) or the doctrine’s climactic resolution loses its distinctively non-ritual character.
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Covenant-harlotry imagery (ch.16, 23) — scandal-fixation or over-literalization risk. High collision potential not with a competing religious system directly, but with the risk of the graphic imagery being either sensationalized or misapplied as commentary on ordinary personal sexual sin rather than received as prophetic covenant-lawsuit allegory.
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Behavioral righteousness (Ezekiel 18/33) vs. forensic imputed righteousness (Romans) sharing the root
ncaj ncees. A cross-curriculum register-blending risk rather than a traditional-religion collision: a learner sequencing Romans then Ezekiel (or vice versa) could conclude the two books contradict each other on the ground of righteousness unless the behavioral/forensic register distinction is made explicit every time. -
“For my name’s sake” (ch.20, 36, 39) vs. the Romans TM’s grace entry. Lower recurrence and lower direct collision risk than items above, but a real risk of doctrinal blending between two conceptually adjacent but theologically distinct motive-clauses (divine self-consistency/reputation vs. unmerited soteriological favor) if a generation process treats them as interchangeable near-synonyms.
7. Governing Note
This linguistic gap analysis is the Phase 1 Step 8 deliverable supporting the Ezekiel Hmong Language Package. It presupposes and must never contradict the permanent Romans baseline (assets/translation_memory.json, assets/bible_term_registry.json, assets/doctrine_risk_registry.json, analysis/12_ai_translation_requirements.md) and the prior Ezekiel-specific drafts (analysis/08_core_glossary.md, assets/bible_term_registry.json Ezekiel draft). All “NEW” terms and fencing strategies identified here remain provisional pending formal TM-revision review before the Ezekiel package may be considered its own Baseline v1.0. Every ranked ambiguity in §6, and every Critical/High-risk doctrine identified in §2, is routed to mandatory human theologian review before publication, consistent with the review-routing convention established in assets/doctrine_risk_registry.json.
End of analysis/06_linguistic_gap_analysis.md