The common analysis of Greek origins tries to fit Greek into the Indo-European (IE) super family. However, see this for an alternative view. Is it possible that Greek is really "an isolate", but due to extensive interactions with other languages, it has taken on some of the characteristics of the Indo-European group? Examples of languages that are viewed as "isolates" are Etruscan and Basque. As a non-expert in the study of languages, I feel tempted to accept the general consensus view of Greek as an Indo-European language, except for one problem. Non-Indo-European languages such as Etruscan and possibly Minoan have been suggested to have oginated in the Eastern Mediterranean. I am interested in the fact that there was a script-using culture in this region prior to the arrival of Indo-Europeans. There were indigenous Mediterranean people with their own languages, distinct from the Indo-European languages used by later invaders.

Maybe we need to look at some specific evidence. How good are the matches between Indo-European root words and Ancient Greek terms? We are all familiar with words like "acropolise" which seems a good match for the Indo-European root word pele, meaning "a fortified high place". The following list is given (source) as typical of ancient Greek vocabulary.

            woman: Greek gunev (gune). Seems similar to the IE gwen (suffixed zero-grade form: gwn-a).

            man:  Greek aner (i.e. male person) and anthropos (i.e. human being). Indo-European (IE) had the roots wiros and gwena for man and woman. The IE root man, meaning "hand, was adopted to mean "man" in English, Slavic, and Sanskrit. A possible link to the Greek "aner" is the IE root ner, with one meaning being "man". However, the Appendix of the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language suggests that "anthropos" is of unknown origin. Is it of any significance that another meaning of ner is "the name of a sea god", as in the Greek god Nereus? Words for water are interesting. It has been suggested that the Proto-Indo-Europeans did not originate near a large body of water.

            water: Greek hudor. The Indo-European root wed became the Germanic wodor and our "water". A Germanic form wend meaning "wet season", became our "winter". A suffixed zero-grade form of wed was the IE ud-or, suggested as the origin of the Greek hudor. Another IE root meaning water was akwa, as in the Latin aqua.

            sun: Greek hevlios. The IE root for "sun" was sawel which had varient forms such as swen and sun leading to the Germanic sunnon and Old English sunne. The suffixed form sawel-yo is suggested as the origin of the Greek helios.

            three: Greek treis (MASC/FEM.NOM), tria (NTR.NOM). IE trei.

            fish: Greek  ikhthus. The IE peisk, is the standard European root, as in the Latin pisces. Another IE "root", gzhu, meaning "water" is suggested as the gin of the Greek ikhthus, but I am not sure what other IE languages have similar words.

There are many words for sizes and shapes. I'm not sure how useful such words can be for tracing distant relations between languages.

            big: Greek megas. The IE root word meg, meaning great, as in magnificent; Sanskrit maha, as in Maharajah? The English "big" is related to the IE root beu, to swell. Large? Huge? Enormous? Immense, IE me, to measure.

            long: Greek makros. IE mak, long, thin. Again, not clear that this exists outside of a Greek origin and later derivatives.

            small: Greek mikros. Dubious link to IE sme, meaning "to smear". It has been suggested that the English "small" is related to an IE word, melo, meaning a small animal.

            yes:nai; malista; ge (and note that there are other affirmative adverbs as well)
            no: ou (ouk before vowels); oukhi

            good: Greek agathos. IE ghedh, meaning to unite or join is the suggested source of the English "good". The English word "gather" suggests a link to the Greek agathos.

            bird: Greek ornis. There is an IE root, er, with one meaning being "a large bird" and its main meaning "to set in motion". A suffixed zero-grade form, orn, seems to be the source of the Greek ornis. In Germanic languages we have eagle. The generic IE word for "bird" is awi, as in the Latin avis.

            dog: Greek kuon. The ancient IE kwon, dog.

            tree: Greek dendron. IE deru.

Probably more important than individual words are the syntactical structures and rules for arranging words. In the final analysis, we are left with the unhappy conclusion that while we can find similarities between Greek and other Indo-European languages, Greek is at best a strange and difficult branch of the Indo-European language family. We wish we knew more about the origin of Greek.

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