The Creation of West-European Pronouns

J.W. Richter

Fig. 1: LALTA COMEDYA DEL SOMMO POETA DANTE, Header for the Codex Altonensis; Manuscript, Northern Italy; ca. 1360 AD
from Wikipedia Divina Commedia (public domain) some of the androgynous red & blue symbolism may have survived in Dante's manuscript..

From this overview we may identify the mayor role of vowels in naming the Gods, the egopronouns1 and the yes-words. The vowels I and U must be considered as the most prominent male, respectively female symbols, but the most sacred symbol (at least in Greece and the Middle East) seems to have been the E-vowel, respectively the -vowel (Eta ,H). Historical development may be sketched by the following sequence: Etymologists are unaware of any religious symbolism in the personal pronouns2: The personal pronouns belong to the very earliest layer of Indo-European that can be reached by reconstruction. Their forms are unlike those of any other paradigms in the language; they have been called the Devonian rocks of Indo-European. The lack of any formal resemblance in English between the subject case (nominative) I and the object case (accusative) ME is a direct and faithful reflection of the same disparity in Proto-Indo-European, respectively eg (*eg) and me-1. The other pronouns are tu- (*te-), thou, nes-2 or we-, we, and yu-, you. No pronouns for the third person were in use. In vulgar Latin the personal pronouns3 came into more and more frequent use. Ego and tu are very common in Petronius4. Ego lost its g in all the territory, but probably not until the end of the Vulgar Latin period. According to Meyer-Lbke, Lat. Spr. 484, eo occurs in manuscripts of the sixth century.5 The Greeks used three (I, A en U) , five, up to seven vowels (A, E, H, I, O, U respectively Y and ).6 We have already heard Eusebius say that the Jews expressed the name of God with the seven vowels7. Higgins also quotes scholars who suggest that the Bacchantes' cry "EVOHE!" derived from the very same word8. The name eioudeon for Jews does reveal a great number of vowels. An inscription at the seven pillars of the Milete theater documents the Greek expression: topos eioudeon ton kai theosebion to be translated to: Place of the Jews, who are also called God-fearing9. In Divina commedia - Paradiso, Canto XXVI10 Dante (ca. 1360) documents the initially applied divine name as I and subsequently as El(translated from Italian to English)11: 'I' was the name on earth of the Sovereign Good, whose joyous rays envelop and surround me. Later 'El' became His name, and that is as it should be. Wycliffe originally applied Y as an ego-pronoun, later the Y has been replaced by an I (Wycliffe Bible, 1395). In the neighborhood of the first episcopal site at the north side of the Alps (the Swiss city of Chur) some remarkable concentrated linguistic areas for the ego-pronouns ieu, iau and iou12 are to be found. In the surrounding countries the modern ego-pronouns are je (French), ja

1 In this document the ego-pronoun is the personal pronoun of the first person singular 2 From: Indo-European and the Indo-Europeans Calvert Watkins 3 The Prime Words in Adam's Language 4 Source: Vulgar Latin (page 34) 5 Source: Vulgar Latin (See 263), (page 161). 6 On the Symbolism of the Vowels A-E-I-O-U en The Sacred Vowels in Pronouns - notes to The Mystery of the Seven Vowels (1991) Joscelyn Godwin 7 Source: Anacalypsis van Godfrey Higgins (1771-1833) 8 The Mystery of the Seven Vowels (1991) Joscelyn Godwin 9 Light from the Ancient East, door Adolf Deissmann, p. 451 see: Jewish InscripPlace of the Jews, who are also called God-fearing tion at Miletus Theater 10 source: Divina commedia - Paradiso, Canto XXVI 11 I s'appellava in terra il sommo bene onde vien la letizia che mi fascia; e El si chiam poi: e ci convene, 12 See the Swadesh-lists for the languages in the neighborhood of Chur

(Slavic), ih (southern German dialect) and io (Italian and Spanish). Up to ca. 1960 the Church defined woman as a man's limb 13 and the matrimonial couple as Two in one flesh (page 113). Unmarried man and women have been considered as halved man14. According to Morris Swadesh the ego-pronoun is the most important word in any language. The ego-pronouns and the yes-words are very short and usually do contain a surplus of vowels. According to Occitan many West-European yes-words have been derived from Latin words (especially hic ille and hoc). The German word nein (no) however has been inherited as an Erbwort and must be very old15. In the twelfth century France developed two linguistic areas 16. The languages have been named according their yes-words: a southern Oc (Latin: hoc) and a northern Ol (an old form of oui, Latin: hoc ille). The Italian medieval poet Dante also referred to the Italian17 Si (Latin: sic) by expressing18 (in Latin): "nam alii oc, alii si, alii vero dicunt oil" ("some say c, others say s, others say ol"). In the Middle Ages the Occitan language, using ieu as an ego-pronoun, has been a most prominent language. German dialects use a great number of yes-words, for example: Jou, Jupp, Jo, Iu, Jepp, Joa, E, "Jau", "Yo","Jodihoo", "Jausen", "ACK", "k", "y", "japp", "ye", "ya", "yihaa". The correlation between ego-pronouns (such as ieu, iau and iou) and yes-words may be identified in Massey's overview19: It is the religious community, not the race, that will account for the Jews who emigrated to the ends of the earth, and for the names of the Jewish god, who was the Egyptian Iu, Phoenician Iao, Hebrew Iah, Assyrian Iau, Egypto-gnostic Ieou (greater and lesser), Chinese Iaou, Polynesian Iho-Iho, Dyak Iaouh, Nicobar Islands Eewu, Mexican Ao, Toda Au, Hungarian Iao, Manx Iee, Cornish Iau, Welsh Iau (greater and lesser), Hebrew Iao-Sabaoth, Chaldean Iao-Heptaktis, Greek Ia, and IE20, Latin Jupiter and Jove. For these reasons the ego-pronouns ieu, iau, iu21 and iou probably may be considered as images of the divine names such as Ieou, Iau, Diu22, respectively Jupiter. The ego-pronouns ieu, iau, iu and iou consist of a male I-vowel and a female Uvowel, symbolizing the first androgynous man as an image of the Creator God. The central vowel may be considered as a symbolic link.

13 Page 111 in Terra Promissa Henri de Greeve Pr. (1941) 14 Source: the Zohar 15 Nein (and their Indo-European correspondences) belongs to the oldest words of German language (source: Erbwort) 16 Info from: Occitan 17 Italian: Langue di Si 18 Source: De vulgari eloquentia 19 Source: Ancient Egypt The Light of the World (Vol. 1-page 501) by Gerald Massey 20 This correlates to EI and the vowel E at the Apollo-temple as it has been documented by Plutarch in Of the word EI engraven over the gate of apollo's temple at delphi. - Moralia, vol. 4 see the details and photographs in: E - of the E-symbol Engraven Over the Gate of Apollos Temple at Delphi 21 Sicilian language 22 Sicilian language

There is a correlation between the ego-pronouns ieu, iau, iu 23 and iou and the divine names (Dieu, Diu, IU-piter, etc.) which clearly can be identified in Occitan language. These egopronouns may have been created in the first centuries AD, in which the personal pronouns Ego and Tu (and the yes-words) seem to have been introduced into Vulgar Latin.

23 Sicilian language