John C. Wells
Wells in 2008
Born	John Christopher Wells (1939-03-11)11 March 1939 (age 86) Bootle, Lancashire, England
Partner	Gabriel Parsons ​ (died 2023)​
Academic background
Education	Trinity College, Cambridge (BA) University of London (MA, PhD)
Thesis	Phonological Adaptation in the Speech of Jamaicans in the London Area (1971)
Doctoral advisor	Joseph Desmond O'Connor
Academic work
Discipline	Phonetician
Institutions	University College London (1962–2006)

John Christopher Wells (born 11 March 1939) is a Britishphonetician andEsperantist. Wells is a professoremeritus atUniversity College London, where until his retirement in 2006 he held thedepartmental chair in phonetics.^[1] He is known for his work on theEsperanto language and his invention of the standardlexical sets and theX-SAMPA encoding of the IPA.

Wells was born on 11 March 1939 inBootle, Lancashire.^[2]

Wells earned hisbachelor's degree atTrinity College, Cambridge, and his master's degree and his PhD at theUniversity of London.

Wells is known for his book and cassetteAccents of English, the book and CDThe Sounds of theIPA,Lingvistikaj Aspektoj de Esperanto, and theLongman Pronunciation Dictionary. He is the author of the most widely used English-Esperanto dictionary.

Until his retirement, Wells directed a two-week summer course in phonetics forUniversity College London, focusing on practical and theoretical phonetics, as well as aspects of teaching phonetics. The course ends with written and oral examinations, for which theIPACertificate of Proficiency in the Phonetics of English is awarded.

From 2003 to 2007 he was president of theInternational Phonetic Association. He is also a member of the six-man Academic Advisory Committee atLinguaphone.^[3]

Wells has long been a pioneer of new technology. He is the inventor of theX-SAMPA ASCIIphonetic alphabet for use indigital computers that could not handle IPA symbols. He learned HTML during the mid-1990s, and he created a Web page that compiled media references toEstuary English, although he was sceptical of the concept.^[4] After retirement, Wells ran a regular blog on phonetic topics from March 2006 to April 2013. He announced the end of his blog on 22 April 2013 saying, "if I have nothing new to say, then the best plan is to stop talking."^[5]

A considerable part of Wells's research focuses on the phonetic description ofvarieties of English. In 1982, Cambridge University Press published his three volumes ofAccents of English that described accents all over the English-speaking world in phonetic terminology. This applied consistent terminology to accents that had previously been analysed in isolation.Accents of English^[6] defined the concept oflexical sets, a concept in wide usage. A lexical set is a set of words (named with a designated element) that share a special characteristic. For example, words belonging to lexical set BATH have the/æ/ phoneme in the United States and/ɑː/ phoneme inReceived Pronunciation. In addition, Wells is acknowledged as the source of the termrhotic to describe accents where the letterr in spelling is always pronounced phonetically.^[7]

Before writingAccents of English, Wells had written two very critical reviews of theLinguistic Atlas of England, which was the principal output of theSurvey of English Dialects.^[8][9] He argued that the methodology was outdated, that the sample was not representative of the population and that it was not possible to "discover with any certainty the synchronic vowel-system in each of the localities investigated".^[8]KM Petyt noted in his review ofAccents of English that Wells had made abundant use of the data from the Survey of English Dialects in some sections of the work whilst criticising the survey in other parts of the same work.^[10]

Wells was part of the committee of theAtlas Linguarum Europae for England and Wales, but never played a large role.^[11]

Wells was appointed byLongman to write its pronunciation dictionary, the first edition of which was published in 1990. There had not been a pronunciation dictionarypublished in the United Kingdom since 1977, whenAlfred C. Gimson published his last (the 14th) edition ofEnglish Pronouncing Dictionary. The book by Wells had a much greater scope, including American pronunciations as well as RP pronunciations and including non-RP pronunciations widespread in Great Britain (such as use of a short vowel in the wordsbath, chance, last, etc. and of a long vowel inbook, look, etc.). His book also included transcriptions of foreign words in their native languages and local pronunciations of place names in the English-speaking world.

Wells was the president of theWorld Esperanto Association (UEA) from 1989 to 1995. He has also been the president of theEsperanto Academy (2007–2013)^{[citation needed]} and theEsperanto Association of Britain (2011–2013).^[12]

Wells was president of theSpelling Society, which advocates spelling reform, from 2003 to 2013. In 2008, he was criticised in a speech by then-Leader of the OppositionDavid Cameron, who referred to him only as "President of the Spelling Society", for advocating tolerance oftext spelling.^[13]

His father was originally from South Africa, and his mother was English; he has two younger brothers. Wells grew up inUp Holland, Lancashire, born to the vicar of the parish, Philip Wells.^[14][15] He has commented on the accent of the area and how it contrasted with theReceived Pronunciation that was spoken in his home in his bookAccents of English; vol. 2: the British Isles.

He attendedSt John's School, Leatherhead,^{[citation needed]} studied languages and taught himselfGregg shorthand. Having learnedWelsh, he was interviewed in Welsh on radio; according to hisCV, he has a reasonable knowledge of ten languages.^[2] He was apparently approached by theHome Office to work on speaker identification but turned down the offer as it was still considered unacceptable to be gay at the time, and he feared that the security check would make his sexual orientation public.^[4] In September 2006 he signed acivil partnership with Gabriel Parsons, a native ofMontserrat and his partner since 1968.^[4][16] Parsons died on 16 November 2023.^[17]

Wells is a member ofLondon Gay Men's Chorus and was featured in theirIt Gets Better video.^[18] He is also a player of themelodeon^[4] and has uploaded videos of his playing to YouTube.^{[citation needed]}

• 1962 –əspesəminəvbritiʃiŋgliʃ [A specimen of British English]. In:Maître Phonétique Nr. 117, S. 2–5.JSTOR 44705582
• 1967 –spesimɛn.*dʒəmeikənˈkriːoul [Specimen. Jamaican Creole]. In:Maître Phonétique, Nr. 127 S. 5.JSTOR 44705724
• 1968 –Nonprevocalic intrusive r in urban Hampshire. IN:Progress Report, UCL Phonetics Laboratory, S. 56–57
• 1970 –Local accents in England and Wales. In:J.Ling., Nr. 6, S. 231–252.
• 1979 –Final voicing and vowel length in Welsh. In:Phonetica. 36.4–5, S. 344–360.
• 1980 –The brogue that isn't. In:JIPA vol. 10 (1980), S. 74–79. Can be read online.
• 1985 –English accents in England. In: P. Trudgill (Hrsg.):Language in the British Isles. Cambridge University Press. 55–69.
• 1985 –English pronunciation and its dictionary representation. In: R. Ilson: (Hrsg.):Dictionaries, lexicography and language learning. Oxford: Pergamon.
• 1994 –The Cockneyfication of RP?. In: G. Melchers u.a. (Hrsg.):Nonstandard Varieties of Language. Papers from the Stockholm Symposium 11–13 April 1991. 198–205. Stockholm Studies in English LXXXIV. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International.
• 1995 –New syllabic consonants in English. In: J. Windsor Lewis (Hrsg.):Studies in General and English Phonetics. Essays in honour of Prof. J.D. O'Connor. London: Routledge.ISBN 0-415-08068-1.
• 1995 –Age grading in English pronunciation preferences. In:Proceedings of ICPhS 95, Stockholm, vol. 3:696–699.
• 1996 –Why phonetic transcription is important. In:Malsori (Journal of the Phonetic Society of Korea) 31–32, S. 239–242.
• 1997 –What's happening to Received Pronunciation?. In:English Phonetics (English Phonetic Society of Japan), 1, S. 13–23.
• 1997 –Our changing pronunciation. In:Transactions of the Yorkshire Dialect Society xix, S. 42–48
• 1997 –One of three named "main technical authors" for Part IV, Spoken language reference materials. In: D. Gibbon u.a. (Hrsg.):Handbook of Standards and Resources for Spoken Language Systems. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1997.
• 1997 –Whatever happened to Received Pronunciation? In: Medina & Soto (Hrsg):II Jornadas de Estudios Ingleses, Universidad de Jaén, Spain, S. 19–28.
• 1997 –Is RP turning into Cockney?. In: M. P. Dvorzhetska, A. A. Kalita (Hrsg.):Studies in Communicative Phonetics and Foreign Language Teaching Methodology. Kyiv State Linguistic University, Ukraine, S. 10–15.
• 1999 –Which pronunciation do you prefer?. In:IATEFL Bd. 149, June–July 1999, "The Changing Language", S. 10–11.
• 1999 –Pronunciation preferences in British English. A new survey. In:Proc. of the 14th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, San Francisco, 1999.
• 2000 –British English pronunciation preferences. A changing scene. In:Journal of the International Phonetic Association (1999) 29 (1), S. 33–50.
• 2000 –Overcoming phonetic interference. In:English Phonetics (Journal of the English Phonetic Society of Japan), Nr. 3, S. 9–21.
• 2001 –Orthographic diacritics. In:Language Problems and Language Planning 24.3.
• 2002 –John Wells. In: K. Brown, V. Law (Hrsg.):Linguistics in Britain. Personal histories. Publications of the Philological Society, 36. Oxford: Blackwell.
• 2002 –Accents in Britain today. In: Ewa Waniek-Klimczak, Patrick J. Melia (Hrsg.):Accents and Speech in Teaching English Phonetics and Phonology. Lang, Frankfurt/M. 2002 [2003].ISBN 3-631-39616-3, S. 9–17.
• 2003 –Phonetic research by written questionnaire. In: M. J. Solé, u.a. (Hrsg.):Proc. 15th Int. Congress of Phonetic Sciences, Barcelona, R.4.7:4
• 2003 –Phonetic symbols in word processing and on the web. In: M. J. Solé u.a. (Hrsg..):Proc. 15th Int. Congress of Phonetic Sciences, Barcelona, S.2.8:6

• 1962 –A study of the formants of the pure vowels of British English. Unpublished MA thesis, University of London.
• 1971 –Practical Phonetics. London: Pitman.ISBN 0-273-43949-9 (with G. Colson)
• 1973 –Jamaican pronunciation in London. Publications of the Philological Society xxv. Oxford: Blackwell.ISBN 0-631-14730-6. (Revised version of his PhD dissertation, 1971.)
• 1990 –Longman Pronunciation Dictionary. Longman. (ESU Duke of Edinburgh's Prize.)
• 1993 –Hutchinson Dictionary of Difficult Words. Edited by John Ayto. Oxford: Helicon.
• 1994 –Longman Interactive English Dictionary. CD-ROM, incorporating a spoken version of the Longman Pronunciation Dictionary. ACT Multimedia/ Harlow: Longman,ISBN 0-582-23694-0.

• Wells, J. C. (1969).Concise Esperanto and English Dictionary. Kent: Teach Yourself Books.ISBN 0-340-27576-6.
• Wells, J. C. (1982).Accents of English (Three volumes + cassette). New York: Cambridge University Press.ISBN 0-521-22919-7. Vol. 1: an Introduction; vol. 2: the British Isles; vol. 3: Beyond the British Isles
• Wells, J. C. (1985).Geiriadur Esperanto / Kimra Vortaro. London: Grŵp Pump/Group Five.ISBN 0-906632-02-1.
• Wells, J. C. (2000).Longman Pronunciation Dictionary. Harlow, England: Pearson Education Ltd.ISBN 058236468X. (casebound), 0582364671 (paperback edition).
• Wells, J. C. (2006).English Intonation: an Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.ISBN 0-521-68380-7.
• Wells, J. C. (2014).Sounds Interesting: Observations on English and General Phonetics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Wells, J. C. (2016).Sounds Fascinating: Further Observations on English Phonetics and Phonology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

• John C. Wells's homepage: detailing academic works, professional experiences, and personal history.
• John C. Wells's phonetic blog: published regularly since 2006, and discontinued as of April 2013. Archives accessible at the sidebar. Pre-2009 blogs arehere.
• John C. Wells onTwitter.

• 1939 births
• Academics of University College London
• Akademio de Esperanto members
• Alumni of the University of London
• Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge
• British LGBTQ academics
• English Esperantists
• English gay writers
• English LGBTQ scientists
• Linguists from the United Kingdom
• Linguists of English
• Living people
• People educated at St John's School, Leatherhead
• People from Bootle
• Phoneticians
• Presidents of the Universal Esperanto Association
• 20th-century English male writers
• 21st-century English male writers
• 20th-century English LGBTQ people
• 21st-century English LGBTQ people

• Articles with short description
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