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Garahge? Or garridge? Our changing preferences in pronunciation


Professor John Wells


Language gradually changes and so does pronunciation. This applies both to the way we say particular vowels and consonants (the phonemic system and its allophonic realisation) and to specific lexical items. A recent survey reveals that people's pronunciation preferences are changing too.

John Wells is Professor of Phonetics in the University of London and Head of the Department of Phonetics and Linguistics at University College London. He is author of Accents of English (Cambridge University Press, 1982) and of the Longman Pronunciation Dictionary (1990, 2000). His interests centre on the phonetic and phonological description of languages, but also extend to lexicography and language teaching. He is a frequent contributor to BBC Radio and has published in and on Welsh and Esperanto (he is a former President of the World Esperanto Association). He was formerly Secretary of the International Phonetic Association and Editor of its Journal. Based in Britain and at UCL throughout his career, he has given lectures in Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Australia, Cameroon, the United States, Canada, Cuba, Montserrat, Trinidad, Argentina, Chile, Venezuela, Spain, Italy, France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Iceland, Finland, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, the former Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Austria, Greece, Bulgaria, Ukraine and India.