John C. Wells
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
John Christopher Wells, MA (Cantab), Ph.D. (London) (born March 11, 1939), is a British phonetician and Esperanto teacher at University College London, where until 2006 he held 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.
