Yes, Greek has substrate words, but people who are not closely involved in the field must be cautious about this material. Wikipedia is, as always with historical-linguistics issues, well behind the state-of-the-art in the field. Also, the largest works on Pre-Greek were Robert S. P. Beekes’ 2014 monograph Pre-Greek and his 2008 etymological dictionary of Greek and it is easy for a layman to accept these claims. However, Beekes’ work has been savagely reviewed; sadly, he was succumbing to dementia in these years and this affected his work. Subsequent scholarship, for example, has highlighted the fact that many of Beekes’ non-Indo-European words in Greek are not limited to Greek after all, and were presumably borrowed into an Indo-European dialect farther north.
With the success story of paleo-genetics we now know that any non-Indo-European substrates likely stem from the first wave of settlers called Early European Farmers who came via Anatolia and are directly related to the people who built Gobekli Tepe!
Yes, Greek has substrate words, but people who are not closely involved in the field must be cautious about this material. Wikipedia is, as always with historical-linguistics issues, well behind the state-of-the-art in the field. Also, the largest works on Pre-Greek were Robert S. P. Beekes’ 2014 monograph Pre-Greek and his 2008 etymological dictionary of Greek and it is easy for a layman to accept these claims. However, Beekes’ work has been savagely reviewed; sadly, he was succumbing to dementia in these years and this affected his work. Subsequent scholarship, for example, has highlighted the fact that many of Beekes’ non-Indo-European words in Greek are not limited to Greek after all, and were presumably borrowed into an Indo-European dialect farther north.
With the success story of paleo-genetics we now know that any non-Indo-European substrates likely stem from the first wave of settlers called Early European Farmers who came via Anatolia and are directly related to the people who built Gobekli Tepe!
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