Nehemiah — Linguistic Gap Analysis (Hmong Language Package, Phase 1 Step 8)

Governing principle: This document never contradicts the Romans Hmong Baseline v1.0 (assets/translation_memory.json, assets/bible_term_registry.json, assets/doctrine_risk_registry.json, 12_ai_translation_requirements.md) or the Nehemiah-specific analysis/08_core_glossary.md and assets/bible_term_registry.json produced in prior steps. It extends those artifacts with a systematic gap analysis: where Hmong vocabulary is missing (comprehension gap, no native referent), where it is crowded (one native lexeme serves too many referents and must be fenced with qualifiers/co-text), where transliteration is preferable to paraphrase, and which ambiguities carry the highest doctrinal risk across the whole book. Full-book coverage (chs. 1–13) is maintained throughout; no chapter is silently skipped.

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1. Doctrine Vocabulary Matrix

For each of the six assigned doctrines: the available Hmong terms, their specific weaknesses, and the recommended disambiguation strategy. Term IDs reference assets/bible_term_registry.json (Nehemiah registry) unless marked [Romans TM].

1.1 Prayer and Dependence on God in Leadership

Available Term(s)	Weakness	Recommended Strategy
thov Vajtswv / kev thov Vajtswv (#32)	Bare thov alone is the identical verb used for thov dab (petitioning ancestral/household spirits) and thov neeb (petitioning through a shaman). Without an object, prayer sounds like generic spirit-petition.	Mandatory object-anchoring at every occurrence: never bare thov; always thov Vajtswv or thov Yawmsaub. Treat this as structurally equivalent to the Romans baseline’s pehawm Vajtswv rule.
Vajtswv txhais tes zoo (hand of God, #33)	Idiom risks a literal/magical reading (a touch that transmits power), echoing shamanic laying-on-of-hands healing gestures.	Always gloss on first occurrence per module as “God’s favor and enablement,” never “God’s touch.”
kev ntshai thiab hwm Vajtswv (fear of God, #34)	ntshai (fear) alone, without hwm (honor/revere), risks reading as terror of a capricious spirit (cf. baseline’s orgē theou collision).	Keep the two-part compound fixed; never drop hwm.
Au kuv tus Vajtswv, thov nco ntsoov kuv (petition refrain, #35)	Risk of being heard as an invocation formula that compels an outcome, parallel to shamanic name-calling of spirits to force action.	Teach explicitly as trust-based petition to a just Judge, not a compelling incantation; vary surrounding teaching prose while keeping the refrain itself fixed.
qhev [Romans TM #10, applied per Nehemiah registry #36]	Same chattel-slavery residue flagged in the Romans baseline; here as OT self-humiliation before God/king rather than ecclesial office.	Reuse Romans catechetical note verbatim: voluntary, honored self-subjection, not literal bondage.

Net gap assessment: No missing vocabulary; all needed concepts have workable Hmong lexemes. The doctrine’s entire risk surface is crowded-neighborhood risk (prayer-vocabulary overlap with spirit-petition practice), manageable entirely through object-anchoring — no new coinage required.

1.2 Rebuilding the Wall as Restoration of God’s People

Available Term(s)	Weakness	Recommended Strategy
ntsa loog (wall, #38), roob vag (gate, #39)	None identified — concrete, comprehension-level only.	No fencing needed.
kho kom ruaj khov (repair/strengthen, #40)	None; positive cross-load into Joy-as-Strength doctrine (see §3.5).	Maintain consistent phrasing across both doctrines to reinforce the intended thematic link.
cov seem (remnant, #41) [Romans TM]	None; stable.	—
ncaj ncees thiab tso siab tau (faithful/trustworthy person, #42)	Crowded neighborhood: risks bleeding into the Romans baseline’s forensic ncaj ncees (justification) vocabulary if the thiab tso siab tau qualifier is dropped.	Never use bare ncaj ncees for a person’s trustworthy character in this book; the compound is mandatory and must be visually/functionally distinct from raug suav tias ncaj ncees.
feem kaum ib pub rau Vajtswv (tithe, #43), thawj phaus qoob loo (firstfruits, #44) [Romans TM]	Comprehension gap only (no native tithing custom), not a collision.	Agricultural-offering framing works well in an agrarian Hmong context; add an illustrative footnote on first occurrence.
kevcai fij thiab qhib ntsa loog rau Vajtswv siv (dedication, ch.12 registry #18)	Crowded neighborhood: reuses fij domain shared with (a) Christ’s atonement, (b) living-sacrifice ethics, (c) shamanic structure-consecration rites performed over new buildings/houses in Hmong custom.	Always frame explicitly as joyful one-time consecration to God’s use, never atoning, and explicitly contrasted with spirit-appeasement house-blessing ritual.
kev ua kom dawb huv (purified, #19)	See §3.1 below — crowded with folk ritual-purity vocabulary.	See §3.1.

Net gap assessment: Mostly stable; the two live risks (ncaj ncees bleed, fij/dawb huv reuse) are crowded-neighborhood issues requiring fencing, not missing-vocabulary issues.

1.3 The Word of God Read, Understood, and Obeyed

(Doctrine anchoring the core passage, Nehemiah 8:1-12 — highest-density term cluster in the book.)

Available Term(s)	Weakness	Recommended Strategy
Vaj Lug Kub (Scripture) [Romans TM #79/#3], Txoj Kevcai (ntawm Vajtswv / Mauxes) (Law) [Romans TM #27/#4]	Txoj Kevcai shares its root with kev cai dab qhuas (religion/spirit-worship customs); this is the single most doctrinally load-bearing collision in the whole book, since ch. 8 is precisely a public Law-reading ceremony.	Qualifier (ntawm Vajtswv / Mauxes) is structurally non-optional, exactly as in the Romans baseline — no exceptions, including in titles/headers of lessons on 8:1-12.
nyeem (read aloud, #8)	Low risk alone, but doctrinally load-bearing: must always take Vaj Lug Kub / Txoj Kevcai as its stated object, or the emphasis on public, audible proclamation (the ceremony’s central act) is lost.	Never allow nyeem to stand as an intransitive/unspecified verb in generated content about 8:1-8.
nkag siab (understanding, #9)	Missing-vocabulary risk, not collision: there is no single native Hmong lexeme that captures the causative, threefold structure of 8:7-8 (read → give the sense → cause understanding). nkag siab covers only the third link (resulting comprehension).	Recommend a fixed three-part teaching gloss be adopted for lesson use: “nyeem tseeb tseeb, txhais kom meej, thiab pab kom cov pejxeem nkag siab” (read clearly, interpret plainly, and help the people understand) — logged as [TRANSLATOR REVIEW NEEDED: composite gloss for meporash/hevinu, pending TM-revision] rather than treated as a silent permanent coinage.
cov pejxeem sib sau ua ke (congregation/qahal, #7)	None; descriptive, stable.	—
tej lus samhwm (commandments, #10)	Low-medium; functions under the Law umbrella.	No independent fencing needed beyond the Law qualifier it inherits contextually.
qhuas thiab tsa (Yawmsaub) lub npe (bless the LORD, #11)	Directionality trap: the default everyday Hmong verb for “bless” is foom koob hmoov, which is permanently forbidden in the Romans baseline for the grace domain. Nehemiah 8:6 moves people→God (praise), the opposite direction from foom koob hmoov (God/ancestor→person, fortune-dispensing).	Treat as a forbidden-substitution addition (see §4 forbidden-substitution table below); qhuas/tsa...lub npe only, never foom koob hmoov, regardless of how natural the latter sounds in casual register.
txhos caug thiab khoom ncauj pe (rau Yawmsaub / Vajtswv) (bow down, #13)	See §3.2 below — identical posture to pe dab.	See §3.2.
Asmees, Asmees (Amen, #12)	None; established transliteration.	Retain as-is.
quaj ntsuag / quaj (mourn/weep, #31)	See §3.4 below.	See §3.4.

Net gap assessment: One genuine missing-vocabulary gap (the compressed causative “read-interpret-understand” chain of 8:7-8 has no single Hmong verb), requiring a composite teaching gloss rather than a lexical fix. All remaining risk is crowded-neighborhood (Law/kevcai, bow-down/pe, bless/koob hmoov).

1.4 Confession and Covenant Renewal

Available Term(s)	Weakness	Recommended Strategy
leeg txim (confess, #22)	Hmong custom frames confession as a reparable social/ritual apology to elders, clan, or spirits — transactional and interpersonal/horizontal, not primarily God-ward and covenant-renewing.	Explicit contrast teaching required at every occurrence: God-directed, corporate, historical (ch. 9’s recitation), covenant-renewing rather than appeasement-transactional.
kev cog lus (nrog Vajtswv) (covenant, #23)	Crowded neighborhood with (a) the Romans baseline’s lus cog tseg (promise, a unilateral pledge — distinct referent) and (b) Hmong clan blood-oath covenant ritual (killing a fowl, drinking together, spirits as witnesses).	Keep lexically distinct from lus cog tseg; teach explicitly that God Himself — not a ritual object or invoked spirit — is both covenant party and guarantor.
txoj kev khuv leej (mercy) [Romans TM], kev hlub ruaj khov thiab ncaj ncees (chesed, #25)	Mercy/grace conflation risk inherited directly from Romans baseline (mercy vs. txiaj ntsim); chesed risks being heard as ordinary affection if the covenant-loyalty qualifier is dropped.	Maintain Romans-baseline mercy/grace distinction; never drop the ruaj khov thiab ncaj ncees qualifier from chesed.
yoo mov (fasting, #26)	Some Hmong traditional fasting precedes shamanic ritual practice/spirit-communication.	Anchor explicitly to repentance/petition before Yawmsaub, never framed as ritual preparation.
hnav tsoos khaub ncaws hnab tawv thiab muab av rau saum taubhau (sackcloth/earth, #27)	Resonance with Hmong funeral mourning dress/ritual-dust gestures.	Teach as covenant repentance, explicitly distinguished from funerary/apotropaic ritual.
ua caj dab tawv, tsis mloog lus (stiff-necked, #28)	None; idiom transfers cleanly.	—
kaw cim rau ntawm tsab ntawv cog lus (sealed document, #29)	Comprehension gap only (Persian administrative practice); clan-agreement-witnessed-by-elders is an available bridge analogy.	Use the elder-witness analogy in teaching notes, not as a lexical substitute.
lus cog tseg thiab lus foom tsis zoo yog tsis ua raws (oath and curse, #30)	High-risk crowded neighborhood: Hmong oath-taking (killing a fowl, spirit-witnessed pact, self-curse) is structurally almost identical, risking import of a magically self-executing spirit-curse rather than accountability before God.	Mandatory contrast teaching at every occurrence: the sanction is covenant accountability before Yawmsaub alone, not a spirit-invoked automatic curse-mechanism.

Net gap assessment: No missing vocabulary; three high-risk crowded neighborhoods (leeg txim, kev cog lus, oath/curse) all resolvable through documented contrast-teaching, consistent with the Romans baseline’s existing methodology for sin_act_and_condition and original_sin.

1.5 The Joy of the Lord as Strength

(Anchor verse: Nehemiah 8:10, 8:12 — within the core passage.)

Available Term(s)	Weakness	Recommended Strategy
kev zoo siab hauv Yawmsaub yog lub chaw ruaj khov thiab lub zog (joy of the LORD as strength, #21)	Compound coinage carrying two separate fencing burdens simultaneously: (1) “joy” must be explicitly sourced in Yawmsaub or it reads as generic festival merriment (folk feasting/harvest celebration, which in Hmong custom can itself be spirit-honoring); (2) “strength/stronghold” must never revert to bare hwjchim (identical to shamanic ritual power, forbidden per Romans baseline).	This is the single highest-density risk phrase in Nehemiah (see §5 ranked list, #1). Fixed collocation is mandatory verbatim; never paraphrase either half independently.
kev xyiv fab loj kawg nkaus (great joy, #20/#26)	Risk of being heard as generic celebration detached from its cause.	Always anchor co-textually to “understood Word” + “covenant restoration,” per 8:12.
dawb huv (holy day, #14)	See §3.1.	See §3.1.
Kevcai Nyob Hauv Tsev Pheeb Suab (Feast of Booths, #17)	Comprehension gap (booths botanically/materially unfamiliar in permanent-housing highland context), not collision; field-harvest shelter analogy available.	Illustrative note required; teach as commemorating wilderness/provision, not merely a harvest festival (avoids drifting toward a harvest-spirit-thanksgiving framing already present in Hmong agrarian custom).
qhuas thiab tsa (Yawmsaub) lub npe (bless/praise, #11)	See §1.3 above (directionality trap).	See §1.3.

Net gap assessment: No missing vocabulary; the doctrine’s entire risk is concentrated in one compound phrase (#21) that must be protected as an indivisible, non-paraphrasable unit — this is the book’s single most fragile piece of fixed terminology.

1.6 Opposition and Perseverance in God’s Work

Available Term(s)	Weakness	Recommended Strategy
tus tswv xeev (governor/pechah, #45)	Reuses the Romans baseline’s governing_authority pattern; risk only if paired with bare hwjchim.	Never render governor’s authority with bare hwjchim; civil-office framing only.
thuam thiab saib tsis taus (mock/despise, #46), sib koom tes ua phem (conspire, #47), rab ntaj, rab hmuv (weapons, #49)	None; comprehension-level, no collision.	—
Vajtswv yuav tawm tsam pab peb (God will fight for us, #48)	Risk of being heard as invocation of a ritual war-spirit or protective charm, given Hmong traditional-religion patterns of invoking spirits for protection in conflict.	Teach as covenantal confidence in God’s providential defense, explicitly distinguished from spirit-invocation for protection.
kev txo se thiab quab yuam cov pluag (usury/oppression, #50)	Comprehension-level; strong resonance with Hmong communal-obligation norms.	Root the rebuke in covenant fidelity to God, not merely social custom, to avoid a purely humanistic-ethics reading.
Hnub Xanwm (Sabbath, #51)	Risk of confusion with traditional taboo/inauspicious days (hnub tsis zoo) governed by fate (hmoov).	Explicit contrast: a day set apart for worship/rest unto God by His command, never a fate-governed avoidance day.

Net gap assessment: No missing vocabulary; one live collision (Sabbath vs. hnub tsis zoo fate-days) requiring the same anti-fatalism contrast-teaching methodology the Romans baseline applies to hmoov/election.

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2. Missing Vocabulary vs. Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods

2.1 Missing Vocabulary (no native Hmong lexeme; comprehension gap requiring paraphrase/gloss, not fencing)

These are genuine gaps — Hmong simply has no ready-made word — as opposed to collisions with an existing competing concept:

Concept	Gap Type	Resolution
The compressed “read aloud → interpret plainly → cause understanding” causative chain of 8:7-8 (Heb. qara + meporash + sekel/hevinu)	No single verb; Hmong nkag siab only covers the resultant-comprehension endpoint	Composite three-part teaching gloss (see §1.3); logged [TRANSLATOR REVIEW NEEDED] pending formal TM-revision, not silently fixed as permanent.
Feast of Booths/Tabernacles material culture (temporary branch-and-leaf wilderness shelters, ch. 8)	No native referent in a permanent-highland-housing context	Field-harvest-shelter analogy + illustrative note; comprehension bridge only, no doctrinal risk.
Persian-administrative “sealed” covenant document (ch. 10)	No native document-sealing practice	Clan-agreement-witnessed-by-elders analogy; comprehension bridge only.
Tithe as a fixed tenth-portion institutional offering (chs. 10, 13)	No native tithing custom (Hmong gift/reciprocity customs are occasion-based, not proportional-income-based)	Descriptive phrase already adequate (feem kaum ib pub rau Vajtswv); footnote on first occurrence.
Persian provincial governance titles (pechah, ch. 2, 5)	No exact pre-modern Hmong clan-governance equivalent for a foreign-imperial-appointed provincial office	tus tswv xeev (existing modern administrative loan-concept) is adequate; comprehension-level only.

Observation: Nehemiah’s missing-vocabulary gaps are overwhelmingly comprehension gaps (unfamiliar Persian-period institutions/material culture), not doctrinal collisions — a different profile from Romans, where most gaps were doctrinal collisions with existing religious vocabulary. The one exception (the 8:7-8 causative chain) is flagged as the book’s sole true lexical gap requiring composite-gloss treatment.

2.2 Crowded Semantic Neighborhoods (native lexeme already exists but is shared with a competing/adjacent referent, requiring fencing)

These require the Romans baseline’s established fencing methodology — qualifier phrases, mandatory object-anchoring, explicit contrast teaching — rather than new coinage:

§3.1 — dawb huv (holy/purified) neighborhood. Shared by: (a) the holy Sabbath-like day of 8:9-11 (registry #14), (b) ceremonial purification before the wall’s dedication (ch. 12, registry #19), (c) the Romans baseline’s sanctification entry, (d) Hmong folk ritual-purity from spirit-contamination. Fencing strategy: every occurrence must be taught as God-declared/God-directed set-apartness, never a ritually-achieved state that averts misfortune; this is a direct extension of the Romans-baseline sanctification caution into two new OT contexts (holy day, ceremonial purification), raising its cumulative risk across the Nehemiah package.

§3.2 — pe (prostration/bow down) neighborhood. Shared by: (a) worship of Yawmsaub in 8:6 (registry #13), (b) pe dab (ancestor/household-spirit veneration) and pe xwm kab (household-altar veneration) in live Hmong traditional practice. Fencing strategy: identical bodily posture, unavoidable lexically; object must always be stated (pe... rau Yawmsaub / Vajtswv), following the Romans-baseline pehawm-object-anchoring precedent exactly. This is a High-risk fencing case because the posture, not merely the vocabulary, is shared — teaching notes must address embodied practice, not just word choice.

§3.3 — Txoj Kevcai (Law/kevcai) neighborhood. Shared by: (a) the Mosaic Law at the center of ch. 8’s reading ceremony, (b) kev cai dab qhuas (religion/spirit-worship customs), (c) general ancestral ritual custom-keeping. Fencing strategy: inherited directly and without modification from the Romans baseline — the (ntawm Vajtswv / Mauxes) qualifier is structurally mandatory at every occurrence, with zero exceptions, including headers/titles of lessons on the core passage.

§3.4 — quaj (weep/mourn) neighborhood. Shared by: (a) the people’s initial weeping at the Law’s reading, forbidden as the tone for that particular day (8:9-11), (b) genuine repentant weeping affirmed in ch. 9, (c) Hmong funeral ritual-wailing (quaj tuag), a highly specific register. Fencing strategy: must not be taught as “Nehemiah forbids all sorrow” — only the festal-day context of 8:9-11 redirects mourning to joy; ch. 9’s weeping-then-confession is affirmed. Teaching notes must sequence these two occurrences carefully to avoid an apparent internal contradiction.

§3.5 — hwjchim (power/strength) neighborhood [Romans TM #62]. Directly inherited collision: identical to a shaman’s ritual power. In Nehemiah this neighborhood is invoked by negation — the Joy-as-Strength doctrine deliberately avoids hwjchim altogether, substituting lub zog / lub chaw ruaj khov (registry #21) precisely because the Hebrew ma’oz (stronghold/refuge) must not be assimilated to hwjchim’s shamanic-power connotation. Also relevant at ch. 2/5 (pechah, governor, registry #45) and ch. 4 (Vajtswv yuav tawm tsam pab peb, registry #48), where God’s defense/enablement must not be read as ritual potency. Fencing strategy: maintain the Romans-baseline prohibition on bare hwjchim with zero new exceptions; the Nehemiah package’s contribution is demonstrating that the safest strategy is sometimes avoidance of the flagged word entirely in favor of a synonym cluster, not merely qualification.

§3.6 — fij (offering/sacrifice) neighborhood [Romans TM, living_sacrifice/propitiation entries]. Shared by: (a) Christ’s atonement (Romans baseline, not directly re-triggered in Nehemiah but present as background TM constraint), (b) living-sacrifice ethical devotion (Romans baseline), (c) the wall’s dedication/consecration (ch. 12, registry #18), (d) Hmong shamanic structure-consecration/house-blessing rites and general spirit-appeasement offerings. Fencing strategy: ch. 12’s dedication must be explicitly marked as joyful, one-time consecration of the wall to God’s use — never atoning, never a repeatable appeasement transaction, and explicitly contrasted with new-building spirit-consecration custom.

§3.7 — foom koob hmoov vs. qhuas (bless/praise) directionality. Not previously flagged in the Romans baseline because Romans has no direct people→God “blessing” clause of this kind; Nehemiah 8:6 introduces it. Fencing strategy: see §1.3 and the new forbidden-substitution entry in §4 below — this is a new addition to the forbidden-substitution table, not merely an application of an old one.

§3.8 — ncaj ncees (righteous/faithful) neighborhood. Shared by: (a) the Romans baseline’s forensic-justification raug suav tias ncaj ncees collocation, (b) Nehemiah 7:2’s plain-sense “trustworthy/reliable person” (registry #42). Fencing strategy: the compound ncaj ncees thiab tso siab tau must never be shortened to bare ncaj ncees in this book, precisely to prevent readers from importing the Romans justification-doctrine weight onto a simple character reference to Hananiah.

§3.9 — Oath/covenant/curse neighborhood (kev cog lus, lus cog tseg, oath-and-curse, registry #23/#30). Shared with Hmong clan blood-oath covenant ritual (killing a fowl, spirit-witnessed pact, self-curse). Fencing strategy: see §1.4; God must always be taught as both covenant party and guarantor, not a ritual object or invoked spirit-witness.

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3. Transliteration vs. Paraphrase Decisions

Item	Decision	Rationale
Yawmsaub (YHWH)	Transliteration-equivalent retained (established Hmong OT tradition term, registry #2)	Kept lexically distinct from tus Tswv (Adonai/general “Lord”); this is the Hebrew text’s own proper covenant name, not the Romans baseline’s forbidden NWT-style substitution pattern (which concerns replacing NT κύριος in OT quotations). Distinguishing the personal name from the generic title is doctrinally important for Nehemiah’s covenant-renewal emphasis (chs. 1, 9) and is judged High risk only administratively (first formal introduction to this pipeline’s TM), not because of live syncretism.
Asmees, Asmees (Amen)	Transliteration retained (registry #12)	Already established in Hmong Christian liturgical use; no paraphrase attempted, none needed.
pechah (governor)	Paraphrase, not transliteration: tus tswv xeev	A functional-office paraphrase is preferred over a Persian loanword transliteration because the office (delegated provincial civil authority) has a workable modern-Hmong administrative analogue; transliterating an obscure Persian-period term would create an opaque, unteachable label with no comprehension payoff, unlike Yawmsaub, which is already a settled proper name in existing usage.
Chag HaSukkot (Feast of Booths)	Paraphrase: Kevcai Nyob Hauv Tsev Pheeb Suab (lit. “the festival of dwelling in leaf/branch shelters”)	Transliterating “Sukkot” would be opaque to the target audience with no existing tradition-anchor (unlike Yawmsaub or Asmees); a descriptive paraphrase carries the necessary comprehension content and permits the required illustrative-note bridge to Hmong field-harvest shelters.
Chanukkah/dedication (ch. 12)	Paraphrase: kevcai fij thiab qhib ntsa loog rau Vajtswv siv	Same rationale as Sukkot; additionally, paraphrase allows the mandatory fij-domain disambiguating clause to be built directly into the term itself, which a bare transliteration could not carry.
Ma’oz / chedvat YHWH (Joy of the LORD as strength, 8:10)	Paraphrase, fixed compound: kev zoo siab hauv Yawmsaub yog lub chaw ruaj khov thiab lub zog	No plausible transliteration exists for a Hebrew common-noun compound; paraphrase is the only option, but it must be treated with transliteration-level fixedness (never varied) given its anchor-verse status.
Elohei HaShamayim (God of Heaven)	Paraphrase: Vajtswv uas kav saum ntuj ceeb tsheej	A transliteration of the Hebrew phrase would be unteachable; paraphrase keeps Vajtswv as the mandatory head noun (per the Romans baseline’s prohibition on bare Ntuj), with the heavens-descriptor as a subordinate locative clause only.
Hebrew personal/place names generally (Sanballat, Tobiah, Ezra, Shushan, etc.)	Transliteration, following existing Hmong OT convention	Not flagged as risk-bearing; logged per §12 of the Romans baseline’s TM-revision-review convention for any new proper name without a dedicated registry entry, but no doctrinal fencing required.

General rule derived: transliteration is preferred only where (a) an existing, settled Hmong Christian tradition-form already exists (Yawmsaub, Asmees, personal/place names), making the term recognizable rather than opaque; paraphrase is preferred where the referent is an unfamiliar Persian-period institution, a compressed Hebrew idiom, or a compound noun-phrase with no one-word Hmong equivalent, since transliterating those would produce an unteachable, contentless label. This mirrors the Romans baseline’s own reasoning for rejecting a transliterated loanword for hilastērion and baptisma while retaining transliteration for Abba and personal names.

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4. Additions to the Forbidden-Substitution Table (for downstream 12_ai_translation_requirements.md-equivalent document)

Forbidden Substitution	Correct Rendering	Reason
foom koob hmoov for “bless the LORD” (8:6, people→God direction)	qhuas thiab tsa (Yawmsaub) lub npe	koob hmoov is permanently forbidden in the Romans baseline for the grace domain (fate/fortune dispensed by ancestors/spirits per ritual correctness); Nehemiah 8:6 moves in the opposite direction from ordinary “blessing,” and using the everyday verb would import the forbidden fatalistic framing into a praise-context.
Bare ncaj ncees (without thiab tso siab tau) for Hananiah’s trustworthy character (7:2)	ncaj ncees thiab tso siab tau	Prevents importing the Romans-baseline forensic-justification weight of raug suav tias ncaj ncees onto an unrelated character reference.
pe performed toward Yawmsaub/Vajtswv left unstated/object-less in any teaching material on 8:6	txhos caug thiab khoom ncauj pe rau Yawmsaub / Vajtswv	Identical posture to pe dab; omitting the object risks presenting Christian worship as one ritual option among a repertoire of spirit-directed prostrations.
hnub tsis zoo-style fatalistic framing applied to Sabbath observance/violation (ch. 13)	Hnub Xanwm, taught as a day set apart by God’s command	Prevents collapsing covenant Sabbath-keeping into taboo-avoidance of an inauspicious, fate-governed day.
Treating ch. 8’s redirection from weeping to joy (8:9-11) as a blanket prohibition on repentant sorrow	quaj / quaj ntsuag, taught contextually (redirected on this one festal day; affirmed in ch. 9)	Prevents an apparent internal contradiction between 8:9-11 and ch. 9’s affirmed weeping-then-confession.
Rendering ma’oz/“strength” in 8:10 with bare hwjchim	lub zog / lub chaw ruaj khov, always paired with kev zoo siab hauv Yawmsaub	Directly extends the Romans baseline’s hwjchim prohibition to this book’s central anchor verse; this is the single highest-stakes application of that rule in the Nehemiah package.

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5. Ranked List of Highest-Risk Ambiguities in Nehemiah

Ranked by combined severity (doctrinal centrality × collision specificity × likelihood of accidental drift), highest first:

1. kev zoo siab hauv Yawmsaub yog lub chaw ruaj khov thiab lub zog (Joy of the LORD as strength, 8:10) — the core passage’s climactic clause; carries a double fencing burden (joy must be God-sourced; strength must avoid hwjchim) in a single sentence, and any partial paraphrase (e.g., dropping either half, or reintroducing hwjchim) directly inverts the doctrine at its anchor verse. Highest risk in the book.

2. Txoj Kevcai (ntawm Vajtswv / Mauxes) without its qualifier, anywhere in chs. 8-9’s reading ceremony — identical collision mechanism to the Romans baseline, but here it governs the book’s central liturgical event rather than an epistolary argument; dropping the qualifier in a lesson header or quiz option (a documented Romans-baseline failure mode) would be especially damaging in ch. 8 material.

3. txhos caug thiab khoom ncauj pe (bow down) left object-less — identical embodied ritual posture to living Hmong ancestor/spirit veneration; unlike most lexical collisions, this one is behavioral/postural, making it more likely to be silently reproduced correctly in gesture but incorrectly in unstated referent during oral teaching or drama-based curriculum content.

4. foom koob hmoov substituted for “bless the LORD” (8:6) — a new collision not previously documented in the Romans baseline (which only addressed the God→person direction of “blessing”); high likelihood of accidental use since it is the default everyday Hmong verb for “bless,” and its use here would smuggle the forbidden fate/fortune framing into the core passage itself.

5. leeg txim (confess) without corporate/God-ward/covenant-renewing framing — risk of collapsing Nehemiah’s national confession (chs. 1, 9) into a reparable social apology to elders/spirits, undermining the Confession and Covenant Renewal doctrine at its two key textual anchors.

6. kev cog lus (nrog Vajtswv) / oath-and-curse vocabulary (registry #23, #30) — the strongest structural bridge to a live Hmong ritual practice (spirit-witnessed blood-oath covenants) in the entire book, and therefore the likeliest to be unconsciously completed by hearers with an expected ritual element (fowl-killing, spirit-witness, self-executing curse) that the biblical text does not include.

7. dawb huv applied to the holy day (8:9-11) and to ceremonial purification (ch. 12) — a two-context extension of the Romans baseline’s sanctification collision into new OT material, raising cumulative exposure; risk of a ritual-cleansing reading in both the festal-day and dedication contexts.

8. nkag siab standing alone for the compressed “read-interpret-understand” chain of 8:7-8 — the book’s one genuine missing-vocabulary gap; if the composite three-part gloss is dropped for expediency, the doctrine of the Word understood (not merely recited) is weakened at its defining verse.

9. Vajtswv yuav tawm tsam pab peb (God will fight for us, ch. 4) — risk of being heard as a protective-spirit invocation rather than covenantal confidence in providence; moderate risk because the surrounding narrative (physical building work, armed watch) makes a ritualistic misreading plausible without explicit framing.

10. quaj (weep) across 8:9-11 vs. ch. 9 — lower doctrinal centrality than items above, but a real risk of an apparent self-contradiction (forbidding vs. affirming mourning) if the two passages are taught without explicit sequencing notes.

11. ncaj ncees thiab tso siab tau (7:2) drifting to bare ncaj ncees — comparatively contained risk since it occurs in a single narrative aside, but flagged because it directly abuts the Romans baseline’s Critical-tier justification vocabulary and any shortening would blur that boundary.

12. Hnub Xanwm (Sabbath, ch. 13) vs. hnub tsis zoo fatalistic day-avoidance — lower risk because Sabbath observance is already well-established in Hmong Christian practice with minimal ambiguity, but retained on the list because ch. 13’s enforcement narrative could otherwise be moralized into rule-keeping-for-luck rather than covenant fidelity.

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6. Full-Book Coverage Confirmation

Chapters 1–13 have all been reviewed for linguistic-gap purposes in this step. Consistent with 08_core_glossary.md §C, chapters 3 and 11 are explicitly logged here as reviewed, contributing no new gap-analysis findings beyond those already captured (ch. 3’s chazaq/repair vocabulary and ch. 11’s settlement-list material are stable, low-risk, and fully accounted for under §1.2 above) — neither chapter is silently omitted. All other chapters (1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13) contribute at least one entry to the doctrine matrix (§1), the gap/neighborhood inventory (§2), or the ranked ambiguity list (§5) above.