Editing Openai/69186d20-2d14-8013-b9c6-c09000f173f6 (section)

=== Assistant: 2511132238ET ===
251113_2238ET

short answer: no. French salade had (and still has) a back /a/ after the l, not a front vowel. The front /eː/ in Irish sailéad is part of the Irish adaptation and choice of the suffix -éad, not inherited from French. The i is indeed a consequence of deciding on a slender l, not the historical cause of that decision.

Let’s unpack that cleanly.

===== - French salade was and is essentially /saˈlad(ə)/: - /l/ followed by /a/, a low central/back vowel. - No front vowel after the l in any historical French stage relevant to the Irish borrowing. =====
'' So: French did ''not* offer a front vowel after /l/ that Irish could just copy as “slender environment.”

===== Irish sailéad ≈ /ˈsalʲeːd̪ˠ/ is an adaptation that: =====
# Chooses an Irish noun pattern: - Irish has a productive -éad ending in borrowings and native words. - So salade → X + -éad is a natural target shape.
# Needs to decide broad vs slender for /l/ within that pattern. - Once you decide the second syllable will be /eːd/ (→ -éad), the consonant before it will be heard as adjacent to a front vowel in the Irish output form. - Irish phonotactics strongly favor slender /lʲ/ before front vowels like /eː/. - Therefore the /l/ is mapped as slender.
# Then spelling is chosen to ''encode'' that slenderness. - You already have é in the second syllable. - To make sure the l is unambiguously slender, you insert i earlier: - s a i l é a d - The i is primarily a class marker for slender /lʲ/ (plus a minor role in the first-syllable vowel spelling), not a reflection of a historical French front vowel.

So the causality chain is:

: 

You’re exactly right: the i is a downstream orthographic consequence of the broad/slender decision plus the chosen Irish suffix, not the historical phonetic trigger.

===== This example illustrates the general rule: =====
* Broad vs slender in loans is decided in Irish space. - First: pick an Irish-like phonological shape and suffix. - Then: assign broad/slender consistent with Irish phonotactics (often: front vowels → slender, back vowels → broad). - Only afterwards do we write extra e/i letters to make those decisions visible in the spelling.

The donor language’s own lack of a dark/light contrast, or its exact adjacent vowel, is not binding.