Paeonian language

Paeonian, sometimes spelled Paionian, is a poorly attested, extinct language spoken by the ancient Paeonians until late antiquity.

Paeonia was located to the north of Macedon, south of Dardania, west of Thrace, and east of the southernmost Illyrians.

Classification

Classical sources usually considered the Paeonians distinct from the rest of the Paleo-Balkan people, comprising their own ethnicity and language. It is considered a Paleo-Balkan language but this is only a geographical grouping, not a genealogical one. Modern linguists are uncertain as to the classification of Paeonian, due to the extreme scarcity of surviving materials in the language, with numerous hypotheses having been published:

• Wilhelm Tomaschek and Paul Kretschmer have put forward an "Illyrian" hypothesis (i.e a part of the linguistic complex of the ancient north-western Balkans) which, according to Radoslav Katičić, seems to be the prevailing opinion.
• Dimitar Dečev and Susan Wise Bauer proposed a Thracian hypothesis.
• Vladimir I. Georgiev suggested a Phrygian affiliation.
• Karl Beloch, Ioannis Svoronos and Irwin L. Merker consider Paeonian an ancient Greek dialect, or a lost Indo-European language closely related to Greek, i.e. a Hellenic language, with a great deal of Thracian and Illyrian influence.
• Radoslav Katičić has said that "we know so little about their language that any linguistic affiliation seems meaningless".

Athenaeus seems to have connected the Paeonian language to the Mysian language, for which Strabo noted that it was, "in a way, a mixture of the Lydian and Phrygian languages".

Paeonian vocabulary

Several Paeonian words are known from classical sources:

• (), the European bison
• (), a species of fish once found in Lake Prasias
• , a species of fish once found in Lake Prasias. , masc. acc. pl.

A number of anthroponyms (some known only from Paeonian coinage) are attested: (), (), (), (), (), (), etc. In addition several toponyms ( (), () and a few theonyms (), (), the Paeonian Dionysus, as well as the following:

• , effluent of the Strumica River, perhaps from , ( German , , Middle Irish , Sanskrit , , Greek , );
• () (nowadays near Gevgelija), name of a city ( Greek , proper name in Homer; "Ida", mountain in Crete);
• (today Gradsko), name of a city, from ( Old Prussian , Old Church Slavonic , , Old English , , Ancient Greek , , );
• ( and , nowadays Dysoro, ), name of a mountain, from ( Greek ), and ;
• , name of a tribe, possibly from ( Latin , Greek , English acre) with cognates in the Greek tribe of Agraioi who lived in Aetolia, and the name of the month Agrianos which is found throughout the Dorian and Aeolian worlds.

References

Further reading

• Francisco Villar. Gli Indoeuropei e le origini dell'Europa. Il Mulino, 1997.