# The flight’s delay was notified [notify in passive]



## ilovejapan

Can I change an active sentence using “notify” to the passive as below? 

*We notified the passengers of the flight’s delay.*

1. The passengers were notified of the flight's delay.
2. The flight’s delay was notified the passengers of.

I have never heard the way to use No.2.
If it is not proper, what word do you use instead?


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## Florentia52

Your #2 is not grammatically possible, which is why you haven't heard of it. #1 is better, though "flight's delay" sounds a little odd.


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## Wordsmyth

Your 1 is perfectly good, and is the passive form of the original. 

Your 2 is an impossible sentence. But I think I see what you're trying for. It could be "The flight delay was notified *to* the passengers". However, I'd say that's used far less than "The passengers were notified of the flight delay".

(Note: "flight's delay" isn't grammatically wrong, but "flight delay" is used more often.)

_Cross-posted with Florentia._

Ws


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## ilovejapan

Florentia52-san, Woerdymth-san

Thanks for your explanation.

So, the flight delay cannot be the subject when using "notify", right?

If the following sentense is fine to use, should "of" be omitted?
"The flight delay was notified *to* the passengers".

Thank you for your help.
ilovejapan


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## wandle

It seems to me that 'flight's delay' is better than 'flight delay', but that neither is very good.
What is the situation? Presumably the passengers are waiting for the flight to start. 
Therefore, since the flight has not started, it does not exist in real terms, but only as a plan.

In that case, the most apt phrase in my view is 'the delay to the flight'.

With that phrase, there are two ways to use 'notify' in the passive voice:

'_The passengers were notified of the delay to the flight';
'The delay to the flight was notified to the passengers'._

Better still than 'the delay to the flight', though, would be 'the delay in taking off'.

'The flight's delay' would be appropriate if it was an incoming flight, but then it would not be passengers who were being notified on the ground.


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## Wordsmyth

wandle said:


> It seems to me that 'flight's delay' is better than 'flight delay', but that neither is very good.
> _[...]
> _Therefore, since the flight has not started, it does not exist in real terms, but only as a plan.
> In that case, the most apt phrase in my view is 'the delay to the flight'.
> _[...]_
> Better still than 'the delay to the flight', though, would be 'the delay in taking off'.
> _[...]_


Terms such as _flight plan, flight path, flight time, flight delay,_ etc are widely used in the airline and aviation industries.

I don't really see why something being planned prevents the use of an attributive noun . Is 'a wedding invitation' not an apt phrase? Or should we prefer 'an invitation to the wedding'? Should 'scheduled arrival time' be replaced by 'scheduled time of arrival'? ... 

I can imagine a pilot, after take-off, apologising for "the delay in taking off", but I'd be surprised to hear someone say "Here's a list of today's expected delays in taking off". It would be "Here's a list of today's expected flight delays". Actually, if we assume the scenario of passengers waiting at the airport, I'd say the most likely phrase (if a noun phrase were used) would be "departure delay" or "delayed departure".


ilovejapan said:


> _[...] _So, the flight delay cannot be the subject when using "notify", right?
> 
> If the following sentense is fine to use, should "of" be omitted?
> "The flight delay was notified *to* the passengers".  _[...] _


"Notify" is one of those verbs that, when used in the passive, can have as its subject either the information being given or the person/people to whom it's given. But the sentence constructions are different:
- The passengers were notified *of* the flight delay. (_"The passengers"_ is the subject)
- The flight delay was notified *to* the passengers. (_"The flight delay"_ is the subject) ... and there's no "of": it's not a case of omitting it, because it was never there in that construction.

Ws


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## wandle

Wordsmyth said:


> Terms such as _flight plan, flight path, flight time, flight delay,_ etc are widely used in the airline and aviation industries.


That is a general statement. The question is whether the term is appropriate in the original sentence.


> I'd be surprised to hear someone say "Here's a list of today's expected delays in taking off". It would be "Here's a list of today's expected flight delays".


That is a specific situation, different from that of the original post.


> Actually, if we assume the scenario of passengers waiting at the airport, I'd say the most likely phrase (if a noun phrase were used) would be "departure delay" or "delayed departure".


'Yes' to the latter of those, I would say.


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## Wordsmyth

wandle said:


> That is a general statement. The question is whether the term is appropriate in the original sentence. _[...]_


 Agreed, but we don't know who is using the original sentence, or to whom. "We" suggests to me that the speaker is probably an airline employee or tour operator, so "flight delay" would be appropriate. An ngram search for _flight delay, flight's delay, delay to the flight_ shows the predominant use of _flight delay_ in various sources. 


wandle said:


> _[...] _That is a specific situation, different from that of the original post. _[...] _


 Agreed, but the general context could well be similar.


wandle said:


> _[...] _'Yes' to the latter of those, I would say.


 OK, so we could agree on proposing to ilovejapan:
- The passengers were notified *of* the delayed departure.
- The delayed departure was notified *to* the passengers.
I'd say that the first one is probably used more often.

Ws


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## Chasint

ilovejapan said:


> Can I change an active sentence using “notify” to the passive as below?
> 
> *We notified the passengers of the flight’s delay.*
> 
> 1. The passengers were notified of the flight's delay.
> 2. The flight’s delay was notified the passengers of.
> 
> I have never heard the way to use No.2.
> If it is not proper, what word do you use instead?


You can notify a person of an event. You cannot notify an event of anything. Events do not understand English.


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## Cagey

A side note concerning "The delayed departure was notified *to* the passengers."
_"Notified to"_ sounds distinctly wrong to me as a speaker of American English. 

I see that the Oxford Dictionaries Online identify this usage as "chiefly British."

*Added*: Our own dictionary has notify:
_chiefly  Brit_  to draw attention to; make known; announce​


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## Andygc

Cagey said:


> A side note concerning "The delayed departure was notified *to* the passengers."
> _"Notified to"_ sounds distinctly wrong to me as a speaker of American English.."


Don't start thinking there's much of an AE/BE split. I've heard and used "notified", but "was notified to"?  I'm perfectly happy with "the passengers were notified of the delay", but I can't think why anybody would want to mangle the sentence into this form.

I completely fail to understand wandle's objection to "flight delay". It's a perfectly normal English phrase. As it happens, I find the original sentence preferable in this situation (a question wholly devoid of context )

*We notified the passengers of the flight’s delay. *
*We notified the passengers of the flight delay. *


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## wandle

Andygc said:


> I completely fail to understand wandle's objection to "flight delay".


It seems back to front. 'The delay to your flight' makes good sense.

Imagine a train announcer saying 'We apologise for your service delay' or 'your journey delay'.
The normal expression would be 'your delayed service' or 'the delay to your journey'.


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## Andygc

It's not back to front. 
Announcement  "We regret to inform passengers that flight EZ1234 is delayed by 2 hours due to snow on the runway in Geneva".
Airline employee to another airline employee at shift handover "We notified the passengers of the flight delay."
The sentence isn't the announcement,  it's the report that the announcement has been made.


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## kalamazoo

TO me, "flight delay" is a pretty standard phrase used at the airport, though perhaps not in real life.  "Notified to" on the other hand sounds extremely peculiar to me. If I heard someone use it who didn't have a British accent, I would probably assume the person was not a native English speaker.


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## Chasint

kalamazoo said:


> TO me, "flight delay" is a pretty standard phrase used at the airport, though perhaps not in real life.  "Notified to" on the other hand sounds extremely peculiar to me. If I heard someone use it who didn't have a British accent, I would probably assume the person was not a native English speaker.


I have a British accent and I agree. I would like to take this opportunity to publicly disown the paragraph in the OED that says otherwise.


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## e2efour

_The flight delay was notified to the passengers_ sounds unusual, since _notified_ means officially reported to someone responsible for investigation.
_The passengers were notified of the flight delay_ is the normal phrase for informing passengers (although one might prefer to use _informed_).


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## wandle

e2efour said:


> _The flight delay was notified to the passengers_ sounds unusual, since _notified_ means officially reported to someone responsible for investigation.


The meaning 'make [something] known [to someone]' is standard. This has the passive form '[something] is notified [to someone]'. 
The sense 'report for investigation [to an authority]' is seen by the OED as a separate meaning, though it has the same construction.

The OED gives the meaning 'to make [something] known [to someone]' as meaning no. 1, and apparently sees it as the basic and oldest sense, current continuously from the 14th century to the present.

Regarding the meaning 'to inform [someone] [of something] or [that something is so]', the OED says: 


> Common in North American use from the end of the 17th cent.; rare in modern British use before the 20th cent.


WordRef Dictionary gives the etymology, which indicates that the meaning 'to make [something] known [to someone]' was indeed the original meaning.


> Etymology: 14th Century: from Old French _notifier_, from Latin _notificāre_ to make known, from _nōtus_ known + _facere_ to make.


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## e2efour

So if you were notified by a hospital of an appointment, would you find it an appropriate use of _notify_ if the letter said "The appointment was notified to you on 12 August and we are awaiting confirmation that you will attend."

Can you give me any modern use of _notify to_ in the sense of _inform/tell _in the last hundred years, where the meaning is not to _report_?

There are 110 examples of "notified to" in the BNC and nearly all of them are examples of an official notification. This is hardly the case in situation where the passengers are _notified of_ any flight delays_._


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## Andygc

The last example of "notify to" somebody in the OED entry for the first meaning dates from 1910. None of the 112 examples in the British National Corpus has that meaning. A few use "to" as part of an infinitive.  The rest use "notify to" in a formal sense. That is, notification to an official body or to an individual in connection with legislation, regulation, or legal process. None uses the sense used in this thread, of merely letting somebody know about something - where it could be seen as more or less synonymous with "inform". Thus, the usage wandle is supporting (specifically with "to" and without the formality) appears to have become obsolete in BE during the earlier part of the 20th century, whereas the type of usage referred to by e2efour remains current (although not so narrowly defined).


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## kalamazoo

After Googling, I have slightly changed my view.  There is a not uncommon bureaucratic use of notified to in the sense that "Adverse reactions must be notified to the FDA."  This is like an impersonal command form, though. It's not really the same as "the flight delay was notified to the passengers."


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## wandle

e2efour said:


> So if you were notified by a hospital of an appointment, would you find it an appropriate use of _notify_ if the letter said "The appointment was notified to you on 12 August and we are awaiting confirmation that you will attend."


I would be happier if they said 'The appointment was offered to you ...' but that aside I see no problem.


> Can you give me any modern use of _notify to_ in the sense of _inform/tell _in the last hundred years, where the meaning is not to _report_?


Considering that 'to notify' means 'to make known' and 'to report' entails 'to make known', how could the two meanings fail to coincide on this point?


> There are 110 examples of "notified to" in the BNC and nearly all of them are examples of an official notification. This is hardly the case in situation where the passengers are _notified of_ any flight delays_._


If an airline announces a delay to the passengers affected, what is that notification if it is not official?


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## wandle

Andygc said:


> The last example of "notify to" somebody in the OED entry for the first meaning dates from 1910.



If I understand the OED's practice correctly, once a particular meaning of a word is established by relevant citation(s), they feel no need to keep giving more recent examples to show that it is still current. However, if it falls out of use, they will notify that by describing it as obsolete (or whatever is appropriate). We should therefore regard it as current unless we are notified to the contrary. 

Nevertheless, the latest citation given by the OED for the relevant meaning (notify 1 a) is from 2001. That meaning is: 


> 1 a. trans. To make known, publish, proclaim; to intimate, give notice of, announce. Freq. with to. Also occas. intr.: to give notification.





Andygc said:


> Thus, the usage wandle is supporting (specifically with "to" and without the formality)


Sorry, that is your distinction not mine. I have not said that. I see no reason to. I am not aware that it corresponds to any facts.


> [It] appears to have become obsolete in BE during the earlier part of the 20th century


 I think, with respect, that it needs to be evidenced with some facts before the question of obsolescence arises.


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## Andygc

If the OED's practice was as you (wandle) described, the 2001 quotation would not have been added in the 2003 3rd Edition. It is also not an example of "notify to". You could have quoted it, but did not





> 2001   _Evening Post (Wellington) _(Nexis) 22 Oct. 1   The Historic Places Trust yesterday publically notified its intention to place the building..on its register.


You have proposed that "notify to" is a current way of expressing the meaning "To make known, publish, proclaim; to intimate, give notice of, announce.". My point is not to dispute the first meaning in the OED but to observe that "notify to" has ceased to be used other than in the context of, as I wrote previously,





> notification to an official body or to an individual in connection with legislation, regulation, or legal process.


I have provided evidence by searching the British National Corpus and describing the results. e2efour has done the same, and has invited you to provide evidence to support your view. If you have evidence to support your contention that "the delay to the flight was notified to the passengers" is acceptable modern English, please let us have it.


			
				wandle said:
			
		

> If an airline announces a delay to the passengers affected, what is that notification if it is not official?


That'll be a straw man, I take it? It doesn't appear to relate in any way to





			
				 Andygc said:
			
		

> in connection with legislation, regulation, or legal process.


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## wandle

Andygc said:


> If the OED's practice was as you (wandle) described, the 2001 quotation would not have been added in the 2003 3rd Edition.


That does not follow. If a newer example is better than an older one, I expect they would be ready to substitute it. 
I have no doubt that the OED wishes us to understand that meaning (1 a) is fully current.


> It is also not an example of "notify to".


It does not have to be. OED's meaning (1 a) includes both the use with 'to' and without. That follows naturally from the fact that the basic meaning of the word 'notify' is 'make known'. This equivalent expression, 'make known', is also used with 'to' and without.


> "notify to" has ceased to be used other than in the context of, as I wrote previously,
> notification to an official body or to an individual in connection with legislation, regulation, or legal process.


I do find this statement surprising. 'Notify', in the sense of the OED meaning (1 a) ('make known', 'publish' 'announce' etc.) is naturally used both with and without 'to', as is the case with the respective verbs 'make known', 'publish', 'announce' etc. The use of those terms and of 'notify', both with and without 'to', is so common and frequent I am very surprised it should be doubted. I cannot think of any reason to restrict the use of 'notify' in this very general sense (or its equivalent terms) in the way you suggest.


> If you have evidence to support your contention that "the delay to the flight was notified to the passengers" is acceptable modern English, please let us have it.


I should have thought that common experience supported by the OED was more than enough, but here are a few quick examples:

This form uses JAVASCRIPT
_If you find any mistake in this record, please notify it to ...._

listserv.uga.edu The University of Georgia
_If you receive this message by mistake, please notify it to the sender and make sure to delete it_. 

Tagged and Cleaned Wikipedia (TC Wikipedia) and its Ngram
_When you download the data, please notify it to sekine. 

And in the past passive:

Skype 
'Away status' was notified to other users. 

Stack Overflow  
The holidays instances have an attribute called "notified". I use this to know if that holidays was notified to the clients (I don't want to notify a holiday twice). 
(I presume 'that holidays' means: " that instance of 'holidays' ".)

The UAX Project
Faulty common equipment was notified to the trunk exchange telephonist at Peterborough by intermittently actuating the indicator on the number four trunk.
_


wandle said:


> If an airline announces a delay to the passengers affected, what is that notification if it is not official?





Andygc said:


> That'll be a straw man, I take it?


No: a significant point, replying to the last comment in *e2efour's* post 18. The point is that the topic sentence is an example of an official notification.


Andygc said:


> It doesn't appear to relate in any way to
> 
> 
> Andygc said:
> 
> 
> 
> "in connection with legislation, regulation, or legal process".
Click to expand...

There is no reason why it should relate to that. First, my reply to *e2efour* was not addressed to your comment.
Secondly, the phrase "in connection with legislation, regulation, or legal process" is not part of the OED's meaning (1 a), which is the relevant one in the present case.


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## Andygc

You still haven't demonstrated your point. You will recall that so far, various AE contributors have said "notify to" in this form is not used in AE. I have said that it has become obsolete in BE. There are no examples equivalent in meaning or structure to "the delay to the flight was notified to the passengers" in the British National Corpus,  which is based on contemporary written and spoken English. You have found examples that are primarily American, one that is by a non-native (or an illiterate native) (stack overflow) and one which is historical British telephone industry jargon (the UAX Project). I say historical because it is many years since the British telephone system employed a "trunk exchange telephonist".

You have not shown that "the delay to the flight was notified to the passengers" is acceptable modern English.


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## wandle

Andygc said:


> There are no examples equivalent in meaning or structure to "the delay to the flight was notified to the passengers" in the British National Corpus, which is based on contemporary written and spoken English.


There must be countless phrases or sentences in good English of which you might not find examples in a Corpus. The language is bigger than any Corpus. 
As I said, I believe common usage supported by the OED is more than enough.

The Stack Overflow example is not illiterate, merely computer speak written quickly without the punctuation which would be required for publication. It seem 'holidays' is the term for a particular script or piece of data. It ought to have been put in inverted commas to show that.

On the other hand, the expression 'notified to' is so general that it cannot be called 'historical telephone industry jargon'.


> I say historical because it is many years since the British telephone system employed a "trunk exchange telephonist".


That does not affect 'notified to'.


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## e2efour

You can find a small number of cases such as _This decision was notified to you last month_. But here _notified to_ is equivalent to _communicated to_ and is an example of bureaucratic English.
Do you not find it strange that the BNC can give hardly any examples of the use of _notify to_ in this sense? The notification is given to the person of higher status, not the other way round.

The whole point is that the passengers are people who have no standing. They are powerless if they are notified of a delay. They are not people to whom delays should be notified, but people who (indeed) should be notified of delays.

In an insurance contract the insured is required to notify the insurance company of certain things. The wording _Pre-existing medical conditions must be notified to the insurance company_ would not be out of place. But as an ordinary person, I would not expect anything to be notified to me.


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## Andygc

wandle, if you don't find the "stack overflow" example non-native or illiterate then there's little hope of there being a meeting of minds. The OED examples of "notify to" being used without the authority gradient e2efour mentions are historical. They provide no support for currency in the way you propose and I do not accept. I can't see there's anything further for me to add


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## wandle

Andygc said:


> wandle, if you don't find the "stack overflow" example non-native or illiterate then there's little hope of there being a meeting of minds.


It is clear in its context, namely computer talk. It is just not written out in correct form.
It is a valid current example.


> The OED examples of "notify to" being used without the authority gradient e2efour mentions are historical. They provide no support for currency in the way you propose and I do not accept.


Here are some examples from the BNC:

AMW 1780 
_accepting the changed arrangements as notified to you;_

AYX 385
_Whenever we have given you advance notice of any such planned interruptions, we guarantee to restore your supply within the period notified to you._

HD2 2078 
_If this definition changes at a later date it will be notified to you._

It seems perfectly natural to me to speak of the airline notifying the passengers of a delay.
In such a case, it follows logically that the airline has notified it to them.


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## Andygc

wandle, you have found three examples referring to contractual arrangements. Well done, but, frankly, so what? You are merely confirming my perception. You are also relying on an example which contains numerous grammatical errors and present it as demonstrating normal English. In my opinion it is irrational to take the position that such a text provides an example of normal English usage.

None of these is relevant to the point in contention, your sentence "the delay to the flight was notified to the passengers". I see that there is no point in debating this point further. I am content that this sentence is not recognisable as contemporary English usage. I leave it to others to consider the points raised in this thread, and to decide which viewpoint they prefer.

<<---.>>


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## wandle

<< Response to deleted comment. >>

The OED identifies three current and five obsolete meanings of 'notify'. The three current meanings are:


> 1 a
> trans. To make known, publish, proclaim; to intimate, give notice of, announce. Freq. with to.
> Also occas. intr.: to give notification.
> 
> 1 c
> trans. spec. (chiefly Med.). To report (a notifiable occurrence, esp. a case of a serious transmissible disease) to the relevant authority; to make the subject of formal notification. Also occas. intr
> 
> 4.
> trans. To inform (someone); to give notice to. Freq. with of, that.
> Common in North American use from the end of the 17th cent.; rare in modern British use before the 20th cent.


All the examples of 'notify to' given in this thread, as well as the possible contexts for that use mentioned in references to the BNC, clearly fall under meaning (1), either under (a) (general use) or (c) (notification to an authority).

There is no suggestion in the OED that the use with 'to' is confined to official notifications. Even if it were, though, the sentence 'The delay to the flight was notified to the passengers' clearly refers to an official notification.

There is no suggestion in the OED that the use with 'to' is confined to an upward 'authority gradient'. Even if it were, though, it is clear that the passengers are the paying customers, therefore the principals, and the airline are the service providers. 

The BNC and other corpora do not represent an exclusive source separate from authoritative dictionaries such as the OED. On the contrary, such dictionaries make extensive use of the corpora in their work, including the classification of meanings.

It is not likely that any of the examples quoted or contexts suggested in this thread would fall outside the range which the OED considered and took account of in identifying the above meanings of the word 'notify'.


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## wandle

Here is how I understand the Stack Overflow example. It is from an online question about a problem in the Ruby programming language. As is often the case in online chat, the poster has failed to observe correct orthography and presentation, but the sentence is still English. Since I do not know the correct terminology for the individual features involved, I shall use what I hope is the generally applicable term 'sequence of instructions' in referring to certain items.

The Ruby language has certain sequences of instructions which are called by the generic terms 'method', 'model', 'class' and 'client'. There is a particular sequence of instructions called 'Whenever' and another called 'Holidays'. The verbal phrase 'to iterate over [data]' expresses an action or event of some kind in the running of a program. (I expect it means 'to perform a repeated action over [a set of data]'.) An 'instance' of 'Holidays' means an occasion when the sequence of instructions called Holidays is run during the execution of a program. I expect 'Rails 4' is a software program.

Here is the example with its preceding context:


> [_Question title_] Using Whenever with Rails 4 - Modify attributes from a model
> 
> [_Question body_] I use whenever to run daily a method in a model class (of course). This method iterates over a collection of "holidays" instances and then notifies the existence of this holiday to a client (another model).
> 
> Here comes the problem; the holidays instances have an attribute called "notified". I use this to know if that holidays was notified to the clients (I don't want to notify a holiday twice).



Editing this for orthography (my idea of orthography may be at variance with standard computing orthography, but that does not affect the grammar) and (a little) for clearer presentation, we have:

'_I use 'Whenever' to run daily a method in a model class (of course). This method iterates over a collection of instances of 'Holidays' and then notifies the existence of a particular holiday to a client (another model). 

Here comes the problem: the instances of 'Holidays' have an attribute called 'notified'. I use this to know whether that [collection of instances of] 'Holidays' was notified to the clients (I don't want to notify a holiday twice)._'

The exact semantic meaning of the terminology is not important here: what matters for our purpose is that the sentences do conform to English grammar and the expression 'was notified to' is a valid use of the verb. This latter is the key point.


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## kalamazoo

I don't think the passengers are the officials who need to be notified about flight delays.  They don't really have 'official' standing.  Maybe there are things that the airlines are required to notify to the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration).  But in any case, I don't think it's the least bit natural sounding in AmE to say that something was 'notified to' someone in ordinary conversation or even writing.  However it is accurate bureaucratese to say that something needs to be notified to the FDA, but it's a somewhat specialized use.


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## bennymix

As to Wandle's 


> _'The delay to the flight was notified to the passengers'._



.   Barbarous!

I do see some examples on the 'net, but there are not quite so weird:


community.skype.com › ... › Windows (desktop client)‎


> Sep 24, 2013 - 'Away status' was notified to other users. Welcome to the Skype community. To get started please read our short welcome post. Thanks!



--
Theory and Practice of Transboundary Environmental Impact Assessment
books.google.ca/books?isbn=9004164790
Kees Bastmeijer, ‎Timo Koivurova - 2008 - ‎Law



> ... a natural-gas powered thermal power station in Barsebäck, an application that was notified to the Danish Environmental Protection Agency


.


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## wandle

kalamazoo said:


> I don't think the passengers are the officials who need to be notified about flight delays.  They don't really have 'official' standing.


The passengers are the paying customers whom the airline or the terminal managers are there to serve. They owe the duty of that service and all it implies to the paying customers, who are their principals in the matter.

The notification of the delay to the flight is official because it is made in the execution of that duty by those who are delivering the service and who are obliged to inform their principals of any failure in that service.

If a subsequent court case arose in which it was an issue whether passengers had been notified, then this notification, if it was established to have taken place, would be accepted by the court as the performance of that aspect of the duty. That is about as official as it could be.

However, as already noted, there is no requirement that the expression should be confined to official situations.


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## wandle

bennymix said:


> As to Wandle's
> 
> 
> 
> The delay to the flight was notified to the passengers.
> 
> 
> 
> .   Barbarous!
Click to expand...

This use of the passive form is standard. It is not the only correct passive form, but the questioner wanted to know how the verb is used in the passive. If this usage were not included in the answer, then the answer would be deficient.


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## thegreathoo

kalamazoo said:


> "Adverse reactions must be notified to the FDA."


This is poor legal writing imo.  Better version is, FDA must be notified of adverse reactions.

I agree with one of the above posts that announce is the verb to use here.


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## wandle

thegreathoo said:


> I agree with one of the above posts that announce is the verb to use here.


The question is actually about the verb 'notify'.


ilovejapan said:


> Can I change an active sentence using “notify” to the passive as below?
> *We notified the passengers of the flight’s delay.*
> 1. The passengers were notified of the flight's delay.
> 2. The flight’s delay was notified the passengers of.





wandle said:


> there are two ways to use 'notify' in the passive voice:
> '_The passengers were notified of the delay to the flight';
> 'The delay to the flight was notified to the passengers'._


Granted, the situation chosen as an example by *ilovejapan* may not be the most natural one for the verb, but it is not impossible at all.


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## thegreathoo

wandle said:


> The question is actually about the verb 'notify'.



Passive is fine, I was under the impression that was settled.

The active form would be, Airline notified passengers of the flight delay.

I think only people can notify and be notified, not things like flight delay.


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## wandle

thegreathoo said:


> I think only people can notify and be notified, not things like flight delay.


Well, at the risk of repetition:


wandle said:


> there are two ways to use 'notify' in the passive voice:
> _'The passengers were notified of the delay to the flight';
> 'The delay to the flight was notified to the passengers'._


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## thegreathoo

I don't see it.


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## Wordsmyth

thegreathoo said:


> _[...] _I think only people can notify and be notified, not things like flight delay.


 If you look back over this thread, you'll see that there's plenty of documented evidence (including dictionary definitions and corpus examples) that the two different constructions with _notify_ *do* exist. There's no doubt that a flight delay can be notified to someone.

The discussion in the last 20 or so posts has not been about whether that construction exists, but about the contexts in which it is used and how commonly used it is. 

Ws


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