https://www.academia.edu/117596183
In https://www.academia.edu/26348845/ktw_abstract_pdf Witczak gives a series of words attested in ancient Greek glosses that look like old loans from Albanian:
Alb. dhe, G. dê ‘earth’
Alb. voc ‘young boy’, G. bádios
Alb. shegë, G. kusḗgē ‘pomegranate’
Alb. vath ‘earring’, G. aántha ‘kind of earring’
Alb. vesh ‘vine’, G. baíessa ‘bunch of grapes’
Alb. udhë ‘path / way / road’, G. *oútha ‘dust’ or ‘path / way / road’
Since these words were transmitted across the centuries through imperfect scribal copying, it would be remarkable if they all were without errors and remained clear enough to be identified today. Several glosses in Hesychius certainly are Alb. (or close relatives), but their status as Greek instead of odd words found in older texts and compiled is not always clear. I think most were taken from earlier sources and put in order later, so I would think that another entry, G. apellón ‘black poplar’, should be corrected to *spellón to match Alb. shpel. This could be due to a sigma being mistaken for alpha, etc.
PIE *tpel- > Alb. shpel ‘black poplar’, G. pteléā ‘linden’, L. tilia, Arm. t’eli ‘elm’
Since G. dialects lost w and h, aántha from *wahántha makes sense, which I take as *ous- >> *vas-anku- > *vax-ank^ü- ‘ear + hook/curve’. There is no known cause for when *s > sh vs. *s > x / h in Alb.
As for kusḗgē, if from older *kswaigā it resembles:
*tsimdā > síbdē / sílbā, *ks- > Aeo. xímbā ‘pomegranate’, *kx- > *xR- > Cr.? rhímbā,
which seem like old loans from something like:
*syamduwa- > *s(^)abduwa- > Skt. śāḍava-, H. šaddu(wa)- ‘pomegranate (tree)?’
*syamduwa- > *samluwa- > Palaic šamluwa- ‘apple? tree’, Luw. šamluwants(a) ‘apples’
To fit these all together, maybe *tsyambwā > *ksyambwā > *ksyawbwā > *kswaybwā > *kswaygwā (since few IE languages allowed *bw or *Pw in general).
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