Typhoon email: 中止, 延期, 変更 or 取り消し
Mariko coordinates a free conversation event for 120 learners at the city hall on Saturday. The hall can be cancelled without charge until Friday noon. On Wednesday the forecast says a typhoon will pass near the city on Saturday afternoon. Thirty participants come from another prefecture and have already bought train tickets; the six volunteer teachers are all free on the following Saturday. Mariko must choose one word for the subject line of the email so that everyone understands immediately what is happening: 中止, 延期, 変更 or 取り消し. She also has to decide what to write in the body about the train tickets and the hall booking.
1. Which word belongs in the subject line, and what does choosing it commit the organizers to?
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延期 is the only word that fits the facts. 中止 and 取り消し both mean the event will not happen at all, which contradicts having six teachers free the next Saturday and a hall that can still be rebooked. 変更 is too vague - it can mean a change of room, time or content, so a reader cannot tell whether to travel. 延期 states that the event is postponed, which commits Mariko to announcing a new date and to confirming the hall for that date before the free-cancellation deadline on Friday noon.
2. A helper drafts the body as 「イベントを変更します」. Why is this a poor choice even though it is grammatically correct?
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Grammatical correctness is not the test here; information value is. 変更する only signals that something differs from the original plan, so a participant from another prefecture cannot decide whether to use the train ticket, change it, or ask for a refund. The subject line already carries 延期, so repeating a vague word in the body wastes the reader's attention. The body should instead state the concrete facts: the event will not be held on Saturday, the new date will be announced by Friday, and ticket holders should wait for that announcement before acting.
3. One participant replies, 「では、土曜日は行かなくてもいいですか」. How should Mariko answer so that 延期 and 中止 are clearly distinguished for the whole group?
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She should confirm that nobody needs to come on Saturday, but add that the event itself has not been cancelled - it will be held on a later date. The distinction is the point of the question: under 中止 the answer would be 'yes, and there will be no event'; under 延期 it is 'yes for Saturday, no for the event'. A good reply therefore mentions the new date or the date by which it will be announced, so the thirty travellers can decide about their tickets without writing back to ask.