High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The term Pre-Greek substrate refers to the unknown language or languages that are conjectured to have been spoken in prehistoric Greece before the settlement of Proto-Greek speakers in the area. It is thought possible that Greek took over a large number of words and proper names from such a language (or languages), because a proportion of its vocabulary can't be satisfactorily explained as deriving either from Proto-Indo-European or any known, directl ...