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The Appendix Probi (‘Appendix to Probus’) is a text of the seventh or eighth century A.D.. It is a palimpsest
Palimpsest

A palimpsest is a manuscript page from a scroll or book that has been scraped off and used again. The word "palimpsest" comes through Latin from Greek language pa??? + ?a? = , and meant "scraped again." Ancient Rome wrote on Wax tablet that could be smoothed and reused, and a passing use of the rather bookish term "palimpsest" by Cicero se...
 added to the Instituta Artium, a work which had been written in the third or fourth century by the grammarian Valerius Probus
Marcus Valerius Probus

Marcus Valerius Probus, of Beirut, was a Roman Empire grammarian and critic, who flourished during the reign of Nero.He was a student rather than a teacher, and devoted himself to the criticism and elucidation of the texts of classical authors by means of marginal notes or by signs, after the manner of the Alexandrine grammarians....
.

It lists common mistakes in the written Latin of the time. In these mistakes, we can observe tendencies in the grammar, spelling, and pronunciation of the contemporary vernacular which would become the various Romance languages.






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The Appendix Probi (‘Appendix to Probus’) is a text of the seventh or eighth century A.D.. It is a palimpsest
Palimpsest

A palimpsest is a manuscript page from a scroll or book that has been scraped off and used again. The word "palimpsest" comes through Latin from Greek language pa??? + ?a? = , and meant "scraped again." Ancient Rome wrote on Wax tablet that could be smoothed and reused, and a passing use of the rather bookish term "palimpsest" by Cicero se...
 added to the Instituta Artium, a work which had been written in the third or fourth century by the grammarian Valerius Probus
Marcus Valerius Probus

Marcus Valerius Probus, of Beirut, was a Roman Empire grammarian and critic, who flourished during the reign of Nero.He was a student rather than a teacher, and devoted himself to the criticism and elucidation of the texts of classical authors by means of marginal notes or by signs, after the manner of the Alexandrine grammarians....
.

It lists common mistakes in the written Latin of the time. In these mistakes, we can observe tendencies in the grammar, spelling, and pronunciation of the contemporary vernacular which would become the various Romance languages. The author's corrections of these usages give us insight into how Latin was evolving at that time. For example, the instruction ("passim, not passi") or ("nunquam, not nunqua") tells the reader that the Classical Latin word is written with an . The fact that this was a common spelling error tells us that word-final had become silent. Many of these mistakes later became well-and-truly standard, cf. Spanish nunca, from (nunqua).

In some cases, Probus recommends forms that are not the usual Classical ones; for example ("amfora, not ampora") recommends an , whereas amphora
Amphora

An amphora is a type of ceramic vase with two handles and a long neck narrower than the body. The word amphora is Latin, derived from the Greek language amphoreus , an abbreviation of amphiphoreus , a compound word combining amphi- plus phoreus , from pherein , referring to the vessel's two carrying handles on opp...
 is normally spelt with .

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