John C. Wells

John C. Wells
Wells in 2008
Born	John Christopher Wells (1939-03-11) 11 March 1939 (age 85) 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 British phonetician and Esperantist. Wells is a professor emeritus at University College London, where until his retirement in 2006 he held the departmental chair in phonetics.^[1] He is known for his work on the Esperanto language and his invention of the standard lexical sets and the X-SAMPA phonetic script system.