SOME TENTATIVE SOLUTIONS
It may not be wise to dismiss the complexity of Sanskrit outrighly. But the fact does not make it any more difficult than some languages like English and Chinese. Every language has got its own share of peculiarities and thorny elements. Chinese has thousands of symbols but no letters while English has a million spellings apart from accent.
As for declensions, most of the nouns belong only to a few categories (like अकारान्त, इकारान्त, उकारान्त, ऋकारान्त). In the case of conjugations, they can be limited to as few as five basic tenses and moods only, dispensing with the indeciphereble lrung, luT and loong etc. Here too, 70% of the popular verb-roots belong to the First Group (भ्वादि ग्णम) only. Some are advocating the use of शत्रु, शानच and क्तवत pratyayas in place of the tenses and the तव्यत pratyaya in place of vidhi ling. But I am afraid, it will fail to make our task any easier as the pratyayas are to be used again on the basis of various divisions like आत्मनेपदम, परस्मैपदम, स्त्रीलिंगम, पुल्लिंगम, एकवचनं, बहुवचनं etc.
A beginner should not be compelled to learn all the synonyms in the language, which he will, anyway, pick in course of time as he goes on studying its literature. We should carefully pick the common Sanskrit vocabulary used in all the Indian languages and limit the modern Sanskrit to it. Understanding of sandhis and samasas demand a fair knowledge of vocabulary while their formation requires a trait of creativity which is too much to expect of a beginner. In stead, he must be encouraged only to understand the already-existing ready-made formations after the fashion of the English idioms and phrases.
Ungrammatical gender and dual number - we can not help this tricky duo in Sanskrit. I am down with the practice of a few teachers of spoken Sanskrit who are lenient enough to take liberties with these both. 'Sanskrit made easy' should not mean 'Sanskrit diluted.'
Sanskrit is not allergic to loan words, as some Sanskrit scholars themselves opine mistakenly. They can be borrowed with a slight modification in the end-viwel to fit in the declension patterns of the language. For example : बस - बसौ - बस: or ट्रेन - ट्रेनौ - ट्रेन : etc. Or, they can be used true to the source language with a desriptive term appended to it.
For example :
कार वाहनम
पेट्रोल तैलम
जॉर्ज बुष महाशय:
एलिज्बेत राज्ञी etc.
There is no denying the fact that some of the expressions possible in modern languages are not so with Sanskrit. But imitating the style of the dialogues as found in ancient dramas is no solution to this. The structure of the living Indian languages can offer us some insights in creating such expressions in Sanskrit. We should not fight shy of breaking free from the fetters of our rigid scholastic traditions in this regard because change is the vital sign of any language pulsating with life.
For example, we can say - मम गच्छत काले एकं दृश्यं अपश्यं |
(I saw a scene when I was going)
in stead of - यदा अहम् गच्छामि तदा कच्चित दृश्यं अपश्यं |
Similarly we can say - स्त्रिय: भूषणै: अलंकारिता: भवन्ति |
(Women are adorned with ornaments)
in stead of - स्त्रिय: भूषणै: अलंक्रियन्ते |
I also suggest that a huge corpus of modern Sanskrit literature be created by way of translating the best literary works from modern languages into the simplest Sanskrit, using as fewer samasas as possible.
(concluded)