Or even better, Pennsylvania Dutch?
I’m looking to verify a phrase my grandmother used, and to get a proper spelling for it so I can carve a plaque with it.
The phrase to translate is ‘The Pouting Corner’, and I remember it pronounced (phonetically) brut-seck-le .
The joke is that she always used it to refer to my grandfather’s workshop, and I’d like to make the plaque for mine.
Having moved to Virginia, I’m fresh out of Amish to ask about this… 
Maybe coldfire or one of our other posters from the Netherlands might be able to help? Their language is pretty much akin to low german from what I understand.
My grandparents speak Low German and my mom knows a bit of the language, so I could ask one of them. I only know a handful of words, mostly relating to food and haven’t got a clue how to spell any of them anyway, so I can’t help immediately, but maybe in a day or so.
Are you positive about the “L” in there? The reason I ask is that in High German (AFAIK, and I’m admittedly rusty), “Pouting Corner” could be reasonably translated to “Brütsecke” (literally “brooding corner”, or “corner for brooding”) from “brüten”, “to brood” and “Ecke”, “corner”. Its pronunciation is very close to “brut-seck-le”, but not quite.
I assume that a real German will be along shortly to blow this out of the water, though.
It was a long time ago, and I can’t exactly ask my grandmother anymore. I very well could have added the ‘l’ myself, and I’m happy I got it as close as I did.
Would the definite article be Der?
Compound nouns take the gender of the final part of the word, so it’s “die Brütsecke.” (be sure to capitalize the noun)
Disclaimer: I’ve only taken German for two years, so I’m nowhere near fluent.
“ele” can be a diminutive, so Ecke become Eckele, which many would pronounce Eckle.
Kinda like how “Stube” becomes Stübele, but the first e is often not pronounced.
Yes, but -le is typical southern (High) German and not Low German.
It is also not modern “standard” German, although that is derived from High German.
How was the “u” pronounced? Was ist more or less a “oo”, or was it an “ü” which doesn’t exist in English? Someone suggested that in order to pronounce a “ü” you should shape your mouth as if you wanted to say “oo” and form an “ee” with your tongue. This vowel exists in french as well. Think of dry (“brut”) french champagne with a non-silent “t” and you have a German “Brüt-”. This refers to the verb “brüten”, “to breed”. “Brut-” refers to the noun “the brood”.
Both would be possible but those little umlaut-dots are not purely ornamental. 
Hmm… it isn´t really related to Low German, apparently, but
(from here; I am sure they would be happy to answer your question if none of the Dopers can)
I can only do guesswork, too. But the southwestern German/Swiss part would explain the “Eckle”, a diminutive of “Ecke”, corner. Hard to tell how the “brüten” is spelled, I don´t know how it´s spelled in Swiss German. Could be u, but apparently Pennsylvania Dutch substitutes many sounds with ae.
Here´s a very nice link list on the topic if you want to do some research: http://www.ex.ac.uk/~pjoyce/dialects/penngerm.html
Unless another Doper comes by and actually knows the word, I don´t think we have any chance of guessing the spelling, so you might want to ask on one of those webpages.
The word makes perfect sense to me, though - there is a modern German word “Schmollwinkel”, which is basically exactly that. “Schmollen” is another word for “brüten” (and is more common), “Winkel” is an “Eck”. Your word sounds like an older and quainter version of this. I like it
Similarly, for ö, shape your lips into a long O and pronounce a long A (like way).
My Deutsch-Englisch Wörterbuch (Traupman) has “über etwas brüten” as “to brood about something” in addition to the “to breed” definition. Is this not correct? English has brood to mean “an animal’s young”, “to sit on or hatch, as an egg”, and “to think anxiously about”. Can brüten / Bruten be pressed to cover these definitions as well?
Yes, it can. “brüten” is a verb that translates to “to breed” or “to brood”, including “to brood about something”.
“die Brut” is a noun that translates to “brood (noun)”
Below are links to a very nice German-English online dictionary:
Yes. The intransitive sense is to hatch an egg by sitting on it, while the transitive sense can be either that or “to dwell gloomily on a subject”, i.e. your “über etwas brüten”. That is the sense in which the word is used here. It´s not exactly synonymous to “schmollen” (to sulk), but very close.
“über etwas brüten” can also mean “to concentrate on something, to think anxiously about”, e.g. a problem - here the connection to hatching is clearer.
The nouns, are “Brut” for the brood, and “Brüten” for brooding and hatching, respectively.
Ack! Didn´t see your post, kellner.
And not only a simulpost, but a comma in a very weird place. Oh well…
This makes the joke even better. On one hand, you run off to the workshop to fume and pout, but also you’re working on and making things, fussing like a mother hen.
I wish I had more German under by belt than one semester in 1981. All it did for me was to stir up and mangle the 3 years of high school Spanish I had.
die brüt’s ecke - would mean 'the pouter’s [or sulker’s] corner, afaik. [mind the comma]
Have fun in your corner.
Jo, aver Mann kan in Elsaessiche saaven “ele” fuer een diminutive. Meen Frau heisen ''Kim, , un eine prof von Elssaesiche hat er "Kimele, g’nommt.
The diminutive form “ele” is used in Alsatian (a low Germanic dialect, AFAIK), as my wife “Kim” was called “Kimele” by a woman who taught Alsatian.
Vlad/Igor, formerly of Strasbourg/Strassburg
Alsatian is a High German dialect, even “Oberdeutsch” (southernmost class within High German).
For those of you who are not familiar with the whole high/low scheme:
“low” basically means northern, (close to sea level, more or less)
“high” means central to southern (further up the mountains)
Sorry to nitpick, but I’m afraid you’re wrong. First of all, German doesn’t have an apostrophe for indicating the genitive. Yes, many people use it because they think it looks more “English and sophisticated” or whatever, but it just isn’t German.
And the noun would be Brüter - die Brüterecke. But that sounds more like the corner in a nuclear powerplant where you’d put the breeder reactor
Brütecke would be the standard German version of the word vunderbob is looking for - please, if you do find out how to spell the Pennsylvania Dutch version, do post it here, I wanna know!
My grandmother speaks fluent Penn. Dutch. I’ll ask her so we can stop quibbling over High Vs. Low
universe.zip is correct. Pennsylvania Dutch is mostly derived from the High-German dialects of Pfälzisch (spoken in the Rheinland-Palatinate), Schwäbisch (spoken in Baden-Württemberg) and Hessisch (spoken in Hessia), with all their variants. The word “Bruteckle” sounds like a perfectly normal Schwäbisch word to my 3/4 Schwäbisch ears. It comes from the diminutive for “Ecke” (corner). Schwäbisch always adds a -le to form the diminutive, and this dialect uses the diminutive a lot. The best description of a “Schwob” is their “unofficial” motto: “Schaffe, schaffe, Häusle baue” (work, work, to build a house). They are also known as being the Scots of Germany due to their miserliness.
“Brut” comes from “Brüten”, which means to brood, in the sense of “think about what you did wrong”. Therefore we arrive at “Bruteckle”