Brats and Brauts

[David M. Robertson]

Dennis R. Preston wrote:

>
>
> PS: Now that I think about it, there might be a third possibility.
> The homography of "brat" the sausage with "brat" the misbehaving kid
> was so annoying to bratwurst-land sausage gobblers that they
> purposely respelled the word to avoid the homography. (Since the
> pronunciation was well-known, there would be no temptation to create
> a homophone with "brought.")

This sounds very plausible to me.

   Snake