Production of FACE and GOAT by Slovak and Czech immigrants in Edinburgh

This study examines the stylistic constraints on the pronunciation of the FACE and GOAT lexical sets as spoken by Slovak and Czech female immigrants who permanently reside in Edinburgh, Scotland. We undertake an acoustic analysis of monosyllablic words taken from a structured interview, a reading passage, and a wordlist to compare these speakers to fluent learners of RP English living in Slovakia, specifically investigating immigrants’ acquisition of the Scottish English monophthongal variant. The results suggest that long-term immigration has a significant impact on pronunciation patterns, although more formal speech styles may trigger a reversion to instructed L2 norms.