In this article, the historical evidence of contact between the Tarentine Greeks and the Messapian, Oscan, Latin and Siculian speaking peoples is reviewed. It provides a framework for the study of data on linguistic contact between the Tarentines and the speakers of non-Greek languages. Three Tarentine lexemes that may be borrowed from non-Greek languages are studied from this perspective: (1) ῥογός “granary”, a noun for which a Latin origin has been considered; (2) Δίς “Zeus”, said to have its source in the Messapian theonym zis; (3) νοῦμμος, a name for a Tarentine silver coin, apparently related to Latin nummus, but whose attribution to the Tarentine dialect is doubtful. Linguistic analysis shows that, of these examples, only the first is undoubtedly a loanword from a non-Greek language; until the Roman conquest, the Tarentine lexicon appears to be mainly influenced by Sicilian Greek.