Semantic Analysis

Several Tamil terms in this Language Package carry a narrower, broader, or differently-loaded semantic range than their English source word.

Narrower-than-English terms

• பரிசுத்தவான்கள் (saints): must be used for all believers corporately (Romans 1:7), never for a spiritually attained elite — that narrower, elevated sense belongs to சாமியார் or சித்தர், both explicitly rejected for this use.
• அப்போஸ்தலன் (apostle): deliberately narrower than the loosely available குரு, which in Tamil guru-sishya tradition denotes a broader, more generic category of revered teacher.

Broader-than-English terms

• வல்லமை (power): used consistently for “power of God” (Romans 1:16) specifically to avoid சக்தி, which carries a strong, specifically Tamil association with village Amman goddess worship; வல்லமை (might/ability) is broader and safer.
• விசுவாசம் (faith): covers both “belief” and “trust” in Tamil, an advantage since Romans uses “faith” to mean active, personal trust in Christ, not mere intellectual assent.

The pipeline’s clearest case of a term whose everyday meaning IS the risk

• தேவன் (God): unlike a false-friend term that merely sounds similar to something wrong, தேவன்’s ordinary, literal Tamil meaning (“a deva”) is itself the doctrinal problem. This is different in kind from an ambiguous term needing disambiguation (like Punjabi’s ਮੁਕਤੀ or Nepali’s dual-risk salvation vocabulary) — தேவன் is not ambiguous at all; it is precisely and unambiguously “a deity among many,” which is exactly why this Language Package replaces rather than glosses it.

Terms carrying unintended religious-system baggage

• கிருபை (grace): shares vocabulary with the sophisticated Sri Vaishnava prapatti tradition of surrender-based grace; translators must keep Christian grace anchored to Christ’s specific atoning work rather than letting it read as generalized devotional surrender.
• புறஜாதியார் (gentiles): contains ஜாதி (caste) as a root, requiring translators to keep the doctrinal sense (“nations/peoples”) clearly separated from Tamil Nadu’s politically live caste vocabulary.

Implication

Where a Tamil term’s ordinary meaning directly encodes the doctrinal problem, as with தேவன், the glossary’s notes field does more than flag a nuance — it documents why outright replacement, not disambiguation, was the necessary strategy.