First, thank you for the many clear english and other languages sandhi examples. I don't know how you all answer so quickly and with perfect spelling. Presumably from years of typing up lectures or answering students emails..
Secondly, I want to explain to my sanskrit chanting but non-sanskrit knowing, non-linguistic audience how and why in the different mantras the word namaḥ is spelled and pronounced differently. Its easy to explain how namaḥ becomes namas in the phrase namas te .
But with the other pronounciations there are some complications to explain.
1)
namaḥ śivāya is overwhelmingly written namaḥ śivāya and rarely as namaś śivāya or
namaśśivāya . In GRETIL there is namaḥ śivāya 193 times, namaś śivāya 8 times, and namaśśivāya 0 times. But I've only heard the written
namaḥ śivāya chanted as
nama śivāya and never as namaha śivāya (i.e. with the visarga pronounced).. I had always assumed that what was happening was that the written
namaḥ śivāya was being chanted as if it was the sandhi transformed
namaśśivāya .
How do Indians pronounce namaḥ śivāya when they chant it in a hymn or in a mantra?