Discussion: language used in WOC 2012 website

After reading today's article on the Wall Street Journal of the 4th official Swiss language, I was hoping to see the the 2012 WOC website to have its content in that language, but no, only english and french are used.

For those without wsj subscription, use the google workaround ;)
http://www.google.com/search?q=Swiss+Effort+to+Sav...

WOC is on the wrong part of Switzerland . Romansch is spoken in the east part. In the west part were the WOC will be held they speak French.

trying to guess what is the word in Romansch for control [fr. Postes de contrôle (balise), de. Postenkontroll (posten), it. Lanterna]. From this translator, I would guess it is "Lanterna".

Sounds like WOC 2012 will not be too far from the WOC 2011 site...

The Middle of WOC 2003 was in/near the Romansch part.

The Swiss guys I talked to at WOC this year said that French would be the dominant language also for next year...

The Swiss/French border is on the middle final map

for residents of the city of Genève, WOC 2011 was 1.5 hours driving distance, and looks like WOC 2012, it is also about 1 hr driving distance. Pretty convenient for spectators of the sport that live in that city.

The Swiss/French border is on the middle final map
no passports needed, since both France and Switzerland are "Schengen" members.

The TV broadcast from last years Postfinance sprint in Geneva was inconveniently done in a language that is not one of the four official languages of the country (and it wasn't English). I sincerely hope they won't do that again for WOC...

@Eriol: I'm sitting in the organisation of both (PostFinance + WOC'12) and I really don't see which language you were talking about... or were you joking about Swiss German? (which, if it is not the an official written language, is still the spoken language of 63% of the Swiss population and 90% or so of the Swiss orienteers...)

The Swiss/French border is on the middle final map

of which WOC? 2011? 2012?

Well, yes. 63% of your population is speaking a non-official language. (Since it's not mutually intelligible with standard German, I guess it's safe to say it's a language and not a dialect.) I'm just a bit grumpy because I think it's not in line with IOF:s goal of spreading orienteering in the world to choose the tiniest language of all they had to choose from. (And also because I do understand some German and French, but absolutely nothing when it comes to those alemannic dialects.)

2012, La Dôle

Hmmm. If you mean the TV broadcast that was available on internet through the channel "Schweizer Sportfernsehen" with special commentators, then I get your point. It is a private sport channel - a Swiss German one for Swiss German viewers, so the whole broadcast was in Swiss German. The broadcast is thus not coming from the organisation but taken over by Schweizer Sportfernsehen. I can understand that it is somehow frustrating for international viewers...
In the arena the speakers were however mainly using French and English. So just come over to La Chaux-de-Fonds in October, you'll get everything what is said! ;-)