Phonetic correction by the verbo-tonal method

How the verbo-tonal method corrects pronunciation errors by working on frequencies.

Verbo-tonal phonetic correction

had disintegrated, giving rise to numerous Romance languages and their dialects. Verbo-tonal theory has made it possible to see how the system of substitutions works, or what is also called the system of errors of peoples learning a foreign language. There exists in this regard a rich literature concerning all the European languages and certain non-European languages. We even have studies concerning the system of errors of the Japanese and the Chinese learning French.

In addition, a particular system of phonetic correction has been established, based on verbo-tonal theory, which has proved very efficacious to judge by the numerous scientific studies published to date. It would therefore be useful to study systematically the system of errors or the system of substitutions in all the countries of the francophone world where the mother tongue is not French. Thus, whether it is a question of Creole as mother tongue or of any other mother tongue in the countries of the francophone world, we can arrive at true bilingualism if we preserve the phonetic system of the French of France.

We have this possibility, and it would be a pity not to take advantage of it for a purpose as elevated as bilingualism. There are in France and in other countries a fairly considerable number of specialists in this field; in France alone there are around thirty. One need only broaden further the studies mentioned to all the countries of the francophone world and conduct such research systematically. It goes without saying that this research can also embrace countries outside the francophone world. It should not be forgotten that a good knowledge of a foreign language is one of the first conditions for using that language in international relations.

If, then, we want a broad diffusion of French, we must either begin teaching it before age 10 or before age 14, or else know the system of errors and the system of correction in relation to those mother tongues used not only in the countries of the francophone world but, if possible, in the largest possible number of countries in general.

Thus our thesis, according to which there is no absolute limit between handicap and non-handicap, is clearly visible in all the domains of speech. The ignorance of a foreign language is a great handicap in international relations; it can greatly diminish understanding between peoples and thus slow down the path towards world peace. But good solutions exist to pass from handicap to non-handicap, and even to the privilege of becoming bilingual or multilingual. Rarely has the world enjoyed more favourable conditions and material potentialities than it does today. World peace and disarmament are no longer a utopia.

Henceforth, the rights of man and of the citizen can be extended to the handicapped, to children and to women.

The billions of dollars, francs or other currencies of the developed countries that will be saved thanks to even partial disarmament can be used for research and culture, for the search for new procedures for re-education, for the intense individualisation of work with the handicapped, for the equipment best adapted to the handicapped; the price will never be too high if we manage to have no more children who, while hearing well, do not speak; if we attain satisfactory and relatively rapid results in the domain of speech disorders; if we can prepare hearing-impaired children and the profoundly deaf for normal schooling and for integration with the hearing through speech; if we manage to enable the majority of blind children to learn foreign languages before the age of 10 in order then to become professional interpreters; if we give the opportunity to a whole nation to become bilingual or multilingual; if we create the conditions so that every French citizen becomes bilingual or multilingual; if we arrive in the francophone countries at a bilingualism in which French preserves its phonetic, grammatical and lexical structure.

I hope that there will be no further return to the dictatorships oppressing the countries of Eastern Europe. But in order to arrive at a lasting peace, at democracy, at the strict observance of the rights of man and of the citizen in the broadest sense, and at the same time to arrive, as your president says, at change, the whole of Europe and, in fact,

the entire world, must close ranks and defend what Europe has just acquired. In Eastern Europe there is a rich reserve of talents, of eminent specialists in all the scientific branches, who until now were unable to reveal and realise their great intellectual capacities. In these countries there is the courage to keep the freedom they have now won; they will have the courage and the readiness to fight if a new danger to their freedom appears on the horizon.

My country, Yugoslavia — which, during the occupation by Nazi Germany, liberated itself by its own means and suffered enormous losses of population and material goods, which under Tito’s direction opened the way as early as 1948 to all the movements and struggles of countries oppressed by Stalinism to march towards freedom — this country was during both world wars at the side of France; it contains a nation and an ancient principality, Serbia, which has had diplomatic relations with France, and the Consulate of France in Belgrade has now existed for 150 years.

The Yugoslav lands were the subject already in the thirteenth century of a great French epic written by Villehardouin, who, a writer and military man of high rank, described the military exploits of the French and Flemish troops in the region of Zadar and in Zadar itself — a Slavic and Croatian town in Dalmatia. This epic is one of the most important documents of Old French. The great scholar Ruđer Bošković, born in Dubrovnik, in Dalmatia, Yugoslavia, lived in France from 1773 to 1779, and was director of