Semantic Analysis

Several Romanian terms in this Language Package carry a narrower, broader, or tradition-split semantic range compared to their English source word, shaped by the coexistence of Orthodox and Evangelical theological frameworks.

Narrower-than-English (or tradition-split) terms

• sfinți (saints): as in other historically liturgical Christian cultures, popular Orthodox usage narrows “sfinți” to canonized, venerated figures, while Romans 1:7 requires the broadest, all-believers sense.
• chemare (calling): general in English; in Orthodox culture “chemare” carries a strong pull toward the specific sense of “chemare monahală” (a call to monastic life), given the historical prominence of Romanian monasticism.
• mântuire / îndreptățire (salvation / justification): both terms span a forensic, decisive sense (closer to Western Protestant theology) and a transformative, process-oriented theosis sense (Orthodox theology) — arguably the widest doctrinal split of any term pair in this glossary, wider even than the Catholic-Protestant infused/imputed divide in Western Romance languages because it involves a genuinely different soteriological system, not just a different account of merit.

Broader-than-English terms

• credință (faith): covers both “belief” and “trust,” an advantage here since Romans uses “faith” to mean active personal trust, not mere intellectual assent.
• har (grace): broader than the English Protestant sense of “unmerited favor” alone — in Orthodox theological usage it also carries the participatory, quasi-ontological sense of uncreated divine energy, a genuinely richer semantic field that this curriculum should acknowledge rather than flatten.

Implication

Where a Romanian term’s semantic range differs from its English source, or splits along the Orthodox-Protestant theological history, the glossary’s notes field exists specifically to flag the mismatch for translators, so a term is not applied mechanically in a context its broader or contested meaning doesn’t support.