John C. Wells
John Christopher Wells,
MA (
Cantab),
Ph.D. (
London) (born
March 11,
1939), is a
British phonetician and
Esperanto teacher at
University College London, where he holds the
departmental chair in Phonetics. He is a member of the five-person Academic Advisory committee to
Linguaphone.
He is best known for his book and cassette
Accents of English, the book and CD
The Sounds of the IPA,
Lingvistikaj Aspektoj de Esperanto, and the
Longman Pronunciation Dictionary. He is the author of the most widely-used English-Esperanto dictionary, and is also the inventor of the
X-SAMPA ASCII phonetic alphabet. During the summer, John Wells directs a two-week course in phonetics which focuses on practical and theoretical phonetics as well as aspects of teaching phonetics. The course ends with written and oral examinations, for which the
IPA Certificate of Proficiency in the Phonetics of English is awarded. A considerable part of Wells' research focuses on the phonetic description of varieties of English. Since 2003 he has been president of the
International Phonetic Association.
Wells is a member of the
Akademio de Esperanto, and was president of the
World Esperanto Association from 1989 to 1995.
*
J.C. Wells homepage
