Pre-Greek: The lost language hidden within Ancient Greek

Around 1,000 Greek words can’t be traced to any Indo-European language. Where do they come from?

There are about 1,000 words in Ancient Greek that can’t be traced back to any Indo-European language or any other known language in the region. These lexical enigmas even include some words and names you might think of as quintessentially Greek:

Despite centuries of effort, linguists have not been able to trace these words back to Proto-Indo-European (PIE), the parent language from which all the other Indo-European (IE) languages descend. Nor have they identified words in neighboring languages that Greek might have borrowed them from.

Where, then, do these words come from? In this issue of the Linguistic Discovery newsletter, we’ll dig through layers of linguistic history to reveal the mystery language that influenced Ancient Greek.