John Christopher Wells (born 11 March 1939 in Bootle, Lancashire) is a British phonetician and Esperanto teacher. Wells is a professor emeritus at University College London, where until his retirement in 2006 he held the departmental chair in phonetics. == Life == His father was originally from South Africa, and his mother was English; he has two younger brothers. After a childhood in poverty, he studied languages and taught himself Gregg Shorthand. Having learned Welsh, he was interviewed in Welsh on radio; he has a reasonable knowledge of ten different languages. He was apparently approached...

In phonetics, a triphthong /ˈtrɪfθɒŋ/ (from Greek τρίφθογγος, "triphthongos", literally "with three sounds," or "with three tones") is a monosyllabic vowel combination involving a quick but smooth movement of the articulator from one vowel quality to another that passes over a third. While "pure" vowels, or monophthongs, are said to have one target articulator position, diphthongs have two, and triphthongs three. == Examples == === First segment is the nucleus === English in British Received Pronunciation (monosyllabic triphthongs with R are optionally distinguished from sequences with disyllabic...