Truly Pathetic
It is rather pathetic to see how men and women of wisdom can be so very indifferent (and perhaps callous) towards their own heritage language Sanskrit that has preserved in its fold the documentation of the greatest civilization (read Seed-2) that had been present, once, on this earth.
Of what use is such scholarship, which systematically destroys its own heritage language?
On television once I heard a housewife pronounce the English word ‘Joke’ as ‘Joka’ (जोक as जोका). May be it was her accent problem.
Do the learned people (learned in English and Sanskrit alike) too suffer from similar accent problem? If not, then they have no reason to pronounce Sanskrit terms in distorted manner. What gives them the right to present wrong examples before those who follow them?
On the other hand, if they too have similar accent problem then shouldn’t they first deal with their own problem and then, present correct examples before others?
Why do they take shelter under baseless argument "tailing-a helps prevent the halant effect"? They kept defending their stand without any concern for its outcome.
And, what has been the outcome? Practically every second word in Sanskrit has become a "Joka".
Today, every pundit (and ignorant equally) pronounces योग as योगा, कर्म as कर्मा, मोक्ष as मोक्षा, धर्म as धर्मा, पाप as पापा, पुण्य as पुण्या, काम as कामा, अर्जुन as अर्जुना, and the list can be unending. And many of them can rattle out Sanskrit Shloks like scholars do. Of what use is such scholarship, which systematically destroys their own heritage language?
Examples
Krishna encourages distorted pronunciation कृष्णा which was Paandav Queen Draupadi's name. I prefer to write Krishn कृष्ण without the tailing "a".
Popular spelling "Adhyaya" promotes distorted pronunciation अध्याया besides it does not provide any clue as to which of the three "a" used in Adhyaya should have long "a" emphasis as in "arm". For these reasons, I prefer to place double "a" where that special emphasis is needed as in Adhyaay, and simultaneously I avoid use of tailing "a" to avoid distortion in अध्याय
Another popular spelling "Sloka" suffers from two problems. Use of 'S" does not tell the reader that it should not be pronounced as in "Sit", "Song" or "Saturday". I prefer use of "Sh" to indicate that it should be read as in "Ship" or "Shut". The second problem is that of the "a" that hangs at the end of "Sloka" and distorts the overall pronunciation. The Sanskrit term is not स्लोका but it is श्लोक.
Most popular English spellings like "Arjuna" "Karma" "Dharma" "Adharma" "Moksha" etc. have thoroughly distorted the "scientifically phonetic language" Sanskrit, and brought it down to the lowly level of phonetically unscientific language English, which does not provide any visual clue for differentiating "Put" from "But" or, for that matter "Centre" from "Center".