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Semantic Analysis

Semantic Analysis

Several Manipuri terms in this Language Package carry a narrower, broader, or tradition-specific semantic range compared to their English source word, which affects how consistently they can be used across contexts.

Narrower-than-English terms

  • অসেংবা মীওই (saints): English “saints” can informally mean “especially holy people,” but অসেংবা মীওই must be used for all believers corporately (Romans 1:7), never for a specialist devotional elite — a narrowing risk sharpened by the existing category of গোসাঞি (a Vaishnava renunciant devotee), which names something genuinely different.
  • কৌখিবা / কৌবগী থৌদাং (called/calling): the same English word “called” covers at least three distinct senses in Romans (called to apostleship in 1:1, called to be saints in 1:7, and effectual calling to salvation in 8:28-30). The Manipuri rendering is context-sensitive and must be checked against which sense is active in each verse, and must be kept distinct from a maibi being ritually “called”/seized during Lai Haraoba trance.

Broader-than-English or tradition-anchored terms

  • থাওয়াই (spirit): this word’s ordinary range in Meitei usage extends across the general soul/spirit category, including ancestral spirits (Apokpa) and Umang Lai nature-deities recognized in Sanamahi belief. Its range must be deliberately narrowed by always pairing it with অসেংবা (holy) when referring to the Holy Spirit, never left to stand alone.
  • কৃপা (grace-adjacent favor): not used as this Language Package’s primary term for grace, precisely because its ordinary range in Manipuri Vaishnava usage already covers Krishna’s bhakti-responsive favor — a real, well-developed, but ultimately different concept from unconditioned grace.

Implication

Where a Manipuri term’s semantic range is already anchored to Sanamahism or Vaishnavism specifically, the glossary’s notes field (see translation_memory.json) exists specifically to flag the mismatch for translators, so a term isn’t applied mechanically in a context its actual current Manipuri usage doesn’t support.