John Wells’s phonetic blog

Cockermouth in Cumberland has been in the news recently because of disastrous flooding. Here’s Rod Liddle in yesterday’s Sunday Times: An ex...

OK, it’s a bit early yet for Christmas (though I’m singing in a Christmas show in just one week’s time). Sorry. I was thinking about the car...

Donald Marsh wrote I've been trying to find the origin for the difference in the pronunciation of the word 'schedule' (sked- and...

Pablo Ugerman, a graphic designer, is developing a phonetic font for a degree project. He wrote to me enquiring about phonetic letters and d...

Václav Jonáš Podlipský wrote to ask about the 'unreleased' IPA diacritic. Is it supposed to mark 'no ORAL release' or 'n...

In Saturday’s Guardian Simon Hoggart commented, not for the first time, on Gordon Brown’s “strange pronunciations”. The prime minister has ...

Yesterday I paid a quick visit to the University of Liverpool to chair a fascinating lecture by Wim Jansen of the University of Amsterdam, ...