longman pronunciation dictionary john c wells

He is the inventor of the X-SAMPA ASCII phonetic alphabet for use in digital computers that could not handle IPA symbols. Wells has long been a pioneer of new technology.

He is also a member of the six-man Academic Advisory Committee at Linguaphone. From 2003 to 2007 he was president of the International Phonetic Association.

The course ends with written and oral examinations, for which the IPA Certificate of Proficiency in the Phonetics of English is awarded.Ī considerable part of Wells's research focuses on the phonetic description of varieties of English. Until his retirement, Wells directed a two-week summer course in phonetics for University College London, focusing on practical and theoretical phonetics, as well as aspects of teaching phonetics. He argued that the methodology was outdated, that the sample was not representative of the population and that it was not possible to 'discover with any certainty the synchronic vowel-system in each of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'. His review was generally positive, but he criticised the geographical unevenness of the coverage and the large number of anecdotes from personal experience.īefore writing Accents of English, Wells had written a very critical review of the Linguistic Atlas of England, which was the principal output of the Survey of English Dialects. Accents of English was reviewed by the sociolinguist KM Petyt in the December 1982 edition of the Journal of the IPA. He is the author of the most widely used English-Esperanto dictionary.

Wells is 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. Wells earned his bachelor's degree at the University of Cambridge and his master's degree and his PhD at the University of London.

Longman pronunciation dictionary john c wells