Semitic etymologists believe the Hebrew first-person, singular pronoun, ani⁵⁸⁹ = "I" is composed of two elements. The first element is an⁵⁷⁵, a contracted form of ayin³⁶⁹, = "to be nothing," "to not exist," "a nonentity." The second element is ee = "island." Brown, Driver and Briggs classify the latter under the general form of Ah, and its several derivatives: as an adverb, "whence" or "where," as an interjection, "alas," and as a different adverb, "not," and "nought^335-339." One might assume that the "island" meaning came from a geographical entity which does not amount to much in comparison to the continental land masses. We saw ee used by St. Columba in the naming of his island we know as Iona.
 

Literally, in Hebrew, ani means "an island nonentity," or perhaps "a lonely nothing."
 

Confusion may exist on the linguistic origin of "island" because it is represented by the Hebrew yod and one cannot simply write yod by itself in Hebrew script. It is written with the help of aleph. The origin of ani also may not be simple because the ee (yod) ending is found on all words which indicate the first person singular, both nouns and verbs: moothee = "my death," libbee = "my heart," lamadtee = "I study."
 

OED has a lengthy dissertation on the form of the "I" letter in English, and its ultimate origins through Greek and the Puni (Hebrew) yod. The English "I" was earlier pronounced the same as the Hebrew yod, as a long ee.
 

In the Mediterranean and eastern European languages "I" was sounded with a hard "k," "kh," or "g" sound, found in Greek and Roman ego, German ich, Gothic ic, Norwegian eg, and so on. Again, English shows reversion to the more original Semitic phonetics.
 

(In Greek, the name yod became "iota" by shifting the "d" to a "t" and adding an "a." We know it in English as "jot.")
 

The Greek and Roman e(g)o is composed of the Semitic "ee" married with the Indo-European "o" first person ending, found in Latin amo and in Greek philio = "I love." The form of the pronunciation was more like i'o, with the glottal stop. This marriage suggests that Greek and Latin did not abandon the IE first person singular "o" form, but retained it under the Hebrew/Semitic "ee" influence.
 

Although the English first person, singular "I" may show a correlation with the Hebrew first person singular inflectional ending, the third person, singular pronouns are far more interesting.
 

Consider the following tabulation^EOH:
 

It is plainly evident that the third person, singular pronouns in modern English are identical to those of the ancient Semitic/Hamitic languages. The masculine "he" is found in the masculine Mehri, and the feminine "she" is found in both feminine Akkadian and Assyrian. It can be seen also that in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic, the feminine took on the masculine "h" while losing the feminine "s." It can be seen further that the predominant Semitic masculine ending is "u," while the feminine is "e."
 

Are the parallels of modern English third person pronouns with the ancient Semitic third person pronouns a linguistic accident?

Consider use of English forms in various dialects over the past 1500 years.
 

It is immediately obvious that Old English had the identical form of the Semitic third person pronouns, both masculine and feminine, found in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic. If the origin of the Old English pronouns was Semitic that origin was Hebrew, and not Akkadian, Assyrian, or Egyptian.
 

This list has many forms common with the Semitic list. They include not only "he" and "she," but also "hu," "sio/siu," and "shu." The linguistic forces which led to variations in the Semitic languages were apparently the same as those which were at work in the Teutonic languages.
 

What is our understanding of the origin of the modern English "he" and "she?"
 

OED states that an original Teutonic demonstrative stem hi = "this" supplied not only the pronouns him, his, her, and (h)it, but also the adverbs here, hence, and hither, Old English he, and Old Saxon hi. Other Teutonic languages apparently dropped the "h" to build upon a stem i, illustrated in Old High German ir, er, and Gothic is.
 

This does not explain how the hu got into Old English, except through a linguistic process commonly at work on the personal pronouns in both Semitic and Teutonic languages. The swapping back and forth between the "u" and "e" inflectional endings, which Speiser identified respectively as masculine and feminine in an original Semitic mother tongue, shows a fluid state of evolution in the English language. Did the Hebrew personal pronoun he serve as the origin of the Teutonic demonstrative hi? Is it possible the Semitic third person pronouns were carried into the Teutonic languages in their actual application, and that the demonstrative pronouns derived from them, not vice versa? Our ability to rigorously determine these relationships is buried in the obscurity of available linguistic evidence.
 

A similar difficulty faces us in attempts to understand the origins of the English feminine she. OED remarks that she is "of difficult etymology, but probably an altered form of the Old English demonstrative sio, sie. ...The phonetic development (of she) is exactly parallel to that of the Old English feminine personal pronoun hio and he." In other words, etymologists are uncertain of that evolution, although similar parallels between he and she are indicated in the historic record. Evolution into she is assumed due to a conflict on meaning between the masculine and feminine forms. "...The phonetic development of various dialects had in the 12th and 13th centuries rendered the pronouns he (masc.) and heo (fem.) almost indistinguishable in pronunciation." This was a strong motive for resorting to the demonstrative sio (shu) and sie (she).
 

The ability to trace these developments is complicated by related words. Under etymology of the word the OED states that sie (she) may be "...the reduced and flectionless stem of the Old English se and seo..." which later shifted to the, theo, and thaet, with the last our modern that. A related sa demonstrative was a common Teutonic and Indo-European stem found in Old Saxon se, Old Norse sa, Gothic sa, Sanskrit sa, and Gaelic so, all related to a shifted tha found in Slavonic ta, Greek to, Sanskrit ta, Latin tam and tum.
 

Obviously, the different forms of the pronouns, both demonstrative and personal, have a complex interrelationship and evolution, in phonetics and meaning, in both the Semitic and Indo-European languages.
 

We can recognize immediately how the Latin demonstratives went into French, Spanish, and Italian third person personal pronouns, both singular and plural. This is a process parallel with the Teutonic sa and se demonstratives going into English third person personal pronouns. It is the reverse process as Hebrew third person personal pronouns or inflections becoming demonstratives.
 

Important to this discussion is the origin of the Latin ille = "that," the singular, masculine, nominative demonstrative pronoun. Illi = "those" is the plural. The feminine forms are illa and illae. The Hebrew nominative, plural demonstrative pronoun is elle = "these," both masculine and feminine.
 

If the Latin ille, with its inflections blossoming out into the Romance languages, derived from Hebrew elle, this single word had far reaching impact upon the European languages.
 

The Hebrew second person singular feminine -te ending is found in the te second person singular feminine personal pronoun of Greek, Latin, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian it. The Hebrew second person singular masculine -tah ending is found in the second person singular masculine pronoun tu in Greek, Latin, Spanish and Portuguese.
 

The same Hebrew -ta and -te endings are found in Old English and English thou and thee. The plural hem and hen endings have parallels in English them and then.
 

Thus we find many forms of the personal and demonstrative pronouns in the European languages which could have had origin in Hebrew.
 

One could go on and on with these fascinating relationships. For example, in two pages following I tabulate some of the parallels in the prepositions and conjunctions. It is not my purpose here to do an exhaustive linguistic study. I wish merely to illustrate how the influence of the migrating Iberi tribes infiltrated into all levels and groups of the widespread European people.