Complaint against Buonanotte sounded like a joke

Re: “Italian menus and the language cops” (Don Macpherson, Feb. 21)

When I heard and then read about the recent Office québécois de la langue française complaint against the Buonanotte restaurant, I couldn’t help but think that maybe I had leaped forward in time to April Fool’s Day. Clearly, this was a joke. Could someone really be that ignorant or that insecure as to be offended by words such as “pasta”?

I’m willing to bet it would be hard to find any Italian-food lover from any major city in the world who needed a translation to know what pasta was.

All this waste of time on Pastagate reminded of a true story from many years ago

We were showing Montreal to our cousin and young daughter visiting us from France when we came upon an outdoor sign that read “Chien Chaud.”

Curiosity bit our younger cousin, so she turned to her mom and asked in French: “Maman c’est quoi un chien chaud”?

The reply, also in French, of “C’est un hot dog” remains a classic in our family’s stories.

Kidding aside, I know that all this brouhaha has nothing to do with anything but wanting the predominance of French in Montreal and overzealous OQLF staff that need to justify their existence.

Maybe it’s time to take a stance and say: enough! Never mind the millions of dollars the language police cost us that could be put to better use.

The anonymous complainers, who probably number less than two handfuls, hide behind the shield of the OQLF and are an insult to all the people of Quebec. They are making us the laughing stock of the entire western world.