John Christopher Wells (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 best known for his book and cassette Accents of English, the book and CD The Sounds of the IPA, Lingvistikaj Aspektoj de Esperanto (Linguistic Aspects of Esperanto), and the Longman Pronunciation Dictionary. He is the author of the most widely used English-Esperanto dictionary, and also the inventor of the X-SAMPA ASCII phonetic alphabet. During the summer, John Wells directs a two-week course in phonetics, which focuses practical and theoretical phonetics as well as aspects of teaching phonetics. The course finishes with the written and oral examinations, for which for which the IPA Certificate of Proficiency in the Phonetics of English is awarded. A considerable part of John Wells' research focuses on the phonetic description of varieties of English.
He is out as gay.
