John Wells

John C. Wells (born 1939) is Emeritus Professor of Phonetics at the University of London. A Fellow of the British Academy, he is a former President of the International Phonetic Association (2003-2007) and of the World Esperanto Association. He is the current president of The English Spelling Society.

He studied phonetics under John Trim at Cambridge before going on to do an MA in General Linguistics and Phonetics at University College, London.

He is the inventor of lexical sets, an important concept that helps understanding English vowels in different dialects.

Internet presence
John Wells's phonetic blog (subheading: "Everything to do with phonetics") is his blog. It deals with... phonetics, but other than IPA phonetic symbols, it's written in perfectly understandable English. The farewell was written on Monday, 22 April 2013.

This blog is available in book form: Sounds Interesting - Observations on English and General Phonetics.

Currently Wells writes in his Twitter account.

Publications

 * Wells, J.C., 1982. Accents of English, Cambridge University Press.
 * Wells, J, 2006. English Intonation: an introduction, Cambridge University Press.
 * Wells, J.C., 2008. Longman Pronunciation Dictionary. Third edition, Pearson.