ί

There is evidence that in the earliest alphabets the letter I derived from a (soft) R.

𓀂 ER R > Я > ί > YA > yo I 𓀂

r > ι > l

𓂋 r > l > à > اَ

𓂋 à re ar al اَل : سَمْت اَلرَّأْس samt ar-raʾs “direction of the head”

𓎼 𓂋 𓀁 | silent®

grand < gargantuas ⋍ γίγαντας > gigant > giant ( r > ί > i )

i Իի ինի /ini/ < •irni

In fact much of the old latin and greek vocabulary can be re-read interestingly by replacing
i with r
e with w ( 𓏲 و )
α with ph alpha

having seemingly 'douplicate' phonetic values poses no problem,
because many languages and alphabets distinguish different variants of
r ṙ ṛ ṟ ɾ ɽ, w v ẘ ƕ wh, p ṗ b ph ɸ β ƒ, etc

hijrրՐ𓆳