The third-person feminine pronoun in Hebrew is היא, "hee." But in most instances in the Torah, the word is spelled הוא, with a vav rather than a yud as the middle letter. How does this make sense grammatically? The vav is apparently unpronounced, as otherwise the word would be something like "hiw." But then all we're left with is the chirik-hei, which on its own (without a trailing yud) is just "hih," not "hee." The only thing I can imagine is that it's like a kri / kesiv, where the vav is meant to be pronounced like a yud.
Can anyone offer some enlightenment about this unique word?
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