John C. Wells
Encyclopedia
John Christopher Wells (born 11 March 1939 in Bootle
Bootle
Bootle is a town within the Metropolitan Borough of Sefton in Merseyside, England, and a 'Post town' in the L postcode area. Formally known as Bootle-cum-Linacre, the town is 4 miles  to the north of Liverpool city centre, and has a total resident population of 77,640.Historically part of...

, Merseyside
Merseyside
Merseyside is a metropolitan county in North West England, with a population of 1,365,900. It encompasses the metropolitan area centred on both banks of the lower reaches of the Mersey Estuary, and comprises five metropolitan boroughs: Knowsley, St Helens, Sefton, Wirral, and the city of Liverpool...

) is a British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 phonetician
Phonetics
Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that comprises the study of the sounds of human speech, or—in the case of sign languages—the equivalent aspects of sign. It is concerned with the physical properties of speech sounds or signs : their physiological production, acoustic properties, auditory...

 and Esperanto
Esperanto
is the most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Its name derives from Doktoro Esperanto , the pseudonym under which L. L. Zamenhof published the first book detailing Esperanto, the Unua Libro, in 1887...

 teacher. Wells is a professor emeritus
Emeritus
Emeritus is a post-positive adjective that is used to designate a retired professor, bishop, or other professional or as a title. The female equivalent emerita is also sometimes used.-History:...

 at University College London
University College London
University College London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and the oldest and largest constituent college of the federal University of London...

, where until his retirement in 2006 he held the departmental chair
Professor
A professor is a scholarly teacher; the precise meaning of the term varies by country. Literally, professor derives from Latin as a "person who professes" being usually an expert in arts or sciences; a teacher of high rank...

 in phonetics.

Life

His father was originally from South Africa
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...

, and his mother was English; he has two younger brothers. After a childhood in poverty, he studied languages and taught himself Gregg Shorthand
Gregg Shorthand
Gregg shorthand is a form of stenography that was invented by John Robert Gregg in 1888. Like cursive longhand, it is completely based on elliptical figures and lines that bisect them. Gregg shorthand is the most popular form of pen stenography in the United States and its Spanish adaptation is...

. Having learned Welsh
Welsh language
Welsh is a member of the Brythonic branch of the Celtic languages spoken natively in Wales, by some along the Welsh border in England, and in Y Wladfa...

, he was interviewed in Welsh on radio; he has a reasonable knowledge of ten different languages. He was apparently approached by the Home Office to work on speaker identification, but turned down the offer as it was still considered unacceptable to be homosexual at the time and he feared that the security check would make his homosexuality public.

Career

Wells earned his BA
Bachelor's degree
A bachelor's degree is usually an academic degree awarded for an undergraduate course or major that generally lasts for three or four years, but can range anywhere from two to six years depending on the region of the world...

 at Cambridge
University of Cambridge
The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...

, and his MA
Master's degree
A master's is an academic degree granted to individuals who have undergone study demonstrating a mastery or high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice...

 and Ph.D.
Doctor of Philosophy
Doctor of Philosophy, abbreviated as Ph.D., PhD, D.Phil., or DPhil , in English-speaking countries, is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities...

 at London
University of London
-20th century:Shortly after 6 Burlington Gardens was vacated, the University went through a period of rapid expansion. Bedford College, Royal Holloway and the London School of Economics all joined in 1900, Regent's Park College, which had affiliated in 1841 became an official divinity school of the...

.

He is well known for his book and cassette Accents of English, the book and CD The Sounds of the IPA
International Phonetic Alphabet
The International Phonetic Alphabet "The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic...

, Lingvistikaj Aspektoj de Esperanto, and the Longman Pronunciation Dictionary. He is the author of the most widely used English-Esperanto dictionary.

Until his retirement, Wells directed UCL's two-week phonetics summer course, focusing 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's research focuses on the phonetic description of varieties of English. From 2003 to 2007 he was president of the International Phonetic Association
International Phonetic Association
The International Phonetic Association is an organization that promotes the scientific study of phonetics and the various practical applications of that science. The IPA’s major contribution to phonetics is the International Phonetic Alphabet—a notational standard for the phonetic...

. He is also a member of the six-person Academic Advisory Committee at Linguaphone
Linguaphone (company)
Linguaphone is a global language training provider, and has over 108 years in providing self-study language courses.Part of the Linguaphone Group, Linguaphone’s portfolio of self-study language products are sold in over 60 countries worldwide...

.

Wells has long been a pioneer of new technology. He is the inventor of the X-SAMPA
X-SAMPA
The Extended Speech Assessment Methods Phonetic Alphabet is a variant of SAMPA developed in 1995 by John C. Wells, professor of phonetics at the University of London. It is designed to unify the individual language SAMPA alphabets, and extend SAMPA to cover the entire range of characters in the...

 ASCII phonetic alphabet
Phonetic alphabet
Phonetic alphabet can mean:* phonetic transcription system: a system for transcribing the precise sounds of human speech into writing.** International Phonetic Alphabet : the most widespread such system...

 for use in computers that could not handle IPA symbols. He learnt HTML in the mid-1990s and created a webpage that compiled media references to Estuary English
Estuary English
Estuary English is a dialect of English widely spoken in South East England, especially along the River Thames and its estuary. Phonetician John C. Wells defines Estuary English as "Standard English spoken with the accent of the southeast of England"...

, a concept that he has always been sceptical of. Although now retired, Wells still runs a phonetic blog that attracts comments from regular readers.

Longman Pronunciation Dictionary

Wells was appointed by Longman to write their pronunciation dictionary, the first edition of which was published in 1990. There had not been a pronunciation dictionary released in the UK since 1977, when AC Gimson published his last (14th) edition of English Pronouncing Dictionary. Wells's book had a much greater scope, including American pronunciations as well as RP pronunciations and including non-RP pronunciations widespread in Britain (such as use of a short vowel in bath, chance, last etc. and of a long vowel in book, look, etc.). The book also included transcriptions of foreign words in their native languages and local pronunciations of place-names in the English-speaking world. The book prompted the release of new pronunciation dictionaries by the Oxford and Cambridge publishers.

Esperanto

Wells was president of the World Esperanto Association
World Esperanto Association
The World Esperanto Association is the largest international organization of Esperanto speakers, with members in 121 countries and in official relations with the United Nations and UNESCO. In addition to individual members, 70 national Esperanto organizations are affiliated to UEA...

 (UEA) from 1989 to 1995. He is currently the president of the Esperanto Association of Britain
Esperanto Association of Britain
The Esperanto Association of Britain is a registered educational charity whose objective is to advance the education of the public in the international language Esperanto....

 and since 2007 has been president of the Esperanto Academy
Akademio de Esperanto
The Akademio de Esperanto is an independent body intended to control the evolution of the language Esperanto by keeping it consistent with the fundamental principles thereof. Modelled somewhat after the Académie française, it was proposed by L. L...

.

Work for spelling reform

Wells is currently the president of the Spelling Society. He was criticised in a speech by David Cameron
David Cameron
David William Donald Cameron is the current Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, First Lord of the Treasury, Minister for the Civil Service and Leader of the Conservative Party. Cameron represents Witney as its Member of Parliament ....

 for advocating tolerance of text spelling and omitted apostrophes. However, Cameron was under the misapprehension that the Spelling Society was concerned with upholding standards of spelling.

Music

Wells is a member of London Gay Men's Chorus
London Gay Men's Chorus
Founded in 1991 by a group of six gay men, the London Gay Men’s Chorus is now, with around 190 singing members and over 230 members in total, Europe’s largest and best known gay choir.-Introduction:...

and has featured in their It Gets Better video. He is also a player of the melodeon and has uploaded videos of his playing to YouTube.

Essays

  • 1962 - A specimen of British English. In: Maître Phonétique Nr. 117, S. 2-5.
  • 1967 - Specimen. Jamaican Creole. In: Maître Phonétique, Nr. 127 S. 5.
  • 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 on-line.
  • 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 0415080681.
  • 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 3631396163, 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

Monographs

  • 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 0273439499 (with G. Colson)
  • 1973 - Jamaican pronunciation in London. Publications of the Philological Society xxv. Oxford: Blackwell. ISBN 0631147306. (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 0582236940.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK