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In the "Pater Noster" prayer, why is "panem nostrum cotidianum" sometimes written as "panem nostrum quotidianum"?

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Quotidianum and cotidianum are simply two different ways to spell the same word. This word belongs to a group of words that can be spelled with either a QU or a C, which includes cum and quom.

These interchangible spellings are probably due to a similar sound (in at least one dialect of Latin) between QUO and CO or QUO and CU. The same thing is happening a bit further down in the prayer with the spellings caelis and coelis, because the pronunciation of AE and OE sounds the same in some dialects.

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    Some spell it cotidianum, some spell it quotidianum, but the weirdest people are those who spell it supersubstantialem 😉
    – Sebastian Koppehel
    Commented May 19, 2022 at 21:41
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    cum and quam are not "the same word".
    – fdb
    Commented May 20, 2022 at 15:10
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    @fdb: the answer says “quom”, not “quam”.
    – Asteroides
    Commented May 20, 2022 at 16:23
  • @fdb It's interesting that it was fashionable in certain pedagogical circles in the 19th and 20th centuries to distinguish between cum and quom, with cum being the preposition and quom being the conjunction. Woodcock says the distinction was not ancient.
    – Figulus
    Commented Jul 14, 2022 at 22:32

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