The Paionian language is the poorly attested language of the ancient Paionians, whose kingdom once stretched north of Macedon into Dardania and in earlier times into southwestern Thrace.

Several Paionian words are known from classical sources:

• monapos, monaipos, a wild bull
• tilôn, a species of fish once found in Lake Prasias
• paprax, a species of fish once found in Lake Prasias. Paprakas, masc. acc. pl.

A number of anthroponyms (some known only from Paionian coinage) are attested, as well as several toponyms (Bylazora, ) and a few theonyms (Dryalus, Dyalus, the Paionian Dionysus), as well as the following:

• Pontos, affluent of the Strumica River, perhaps from *ponktos, "boggy" (cf. German feucht, "wet");
• Stoboi (nowadays Gradsko), name of a city, from *stob(h) (cf. Old Prussian stabis "rock", Old Church Slavonic stoboru, "pillar", Old English stapol, "post", Ancient Greek stobos, "scolding, bad language");
• Dóberos, other Paionian city, from *dheubh- "deep" (cf. Lithuanian dubùs, English deep);
• Agrianes, name of a tribe, from *agro- "field" (cf. Latin ager, Greek agros).

Classical sources usually considered the Paionians distinct from Thracians or Illyrians, comprising their own ethnicity and language. Athenaeus seems to have connected the Paionian tongue to the Mysian language, itself barely attested. If correct, this may mean that Paionian was an Anatolian language.

On the other hand, the Paionians were sometimes regarded as descendants of Phrygians, which may put Paionian on the same linguistic branch as the Phrygian language.

Modern linguists are uncertain on the classification of Paionian, due to the extreme scarcity of materials we have on this language. One one side are Wilhelm Tomaschek and Paul Kretschmer, who claim it belonged to the Illyrian family and on the other side is Dimiter Dečev, who claims affinities with Thracian.

However, it seems that Paionian was different from either. It shows a/o distinctiveness and does not appears to be a Satem language. The Indo-European voiced aspirates (*bh, *dh, etc) became plain voiced consonants (/b/, /d/, etc), just like in Illyrian and Thracian, but also like in most other Indo-European languages.

References

• Francisco Villar, Gli Indoeuropei e le origini dell'Europa, (1997), Il Mulino, ISBN 8815057080