Dictate, Diktat; Diction

Dictaphone! Its lifespan has come to an end, and its photos could be found on cyber sphere. Technological developments dictate the usage as new gadgets and articles creep into lives. Dictate functions as a verb and its variants are dictates, dictated, dictating and dictation is a noun. Dictate means saying or reading aloud so that the other person can type down, or write down those words, or to record on a tape or sound recorder.

Politicians and businessmen dictate letters to their personal staff. Teachers dictate passages of a book, or useful contents, to the pupils to write down. Dictate also refers to something influencing over someone or something such as technology dictates people’s lives.

Dictation is a teaching technique: writing down what is dictated Dictate also indicates to telling someone to do something with authority. Dictate also refers to giving order to someone in an official way, in an authoritarian manner, in an officious capacity. Its variant is dictatorial (adjective), dictatorially (adverb) and dictator (noun).

In democratic societies, the elected representatives’ political party comes to power, they will dictate as to what should be the policies of the government ostensibly in the interest of the people. Dictator is a ruler who has total power over his country, and they are usually not elected by people such as in North Korea, and in some Middle Eastern countries.
Dictatorship is a country ruled by a dictator.

Diktat is an order (follow it). Diktat is a noun. Diktat means an order that is an unreasonable one (build 6 lakhs toilets in the county in two years’ time!). When a person issues a diktat (an order) it has to be obeyed. However, there are countries that disobey the diktats of foreign countries. Diction is a style, a manner, a way of speaking or writing; a noun, it also refers to the choice and use of words usually with thoughtfulness.

People with good diction are effective communicators. Dictaphone is a machine that records speech of dictated letters, of a press conference, of an address by a prominent person, and plays it back so that a person, a secretary or journalist can type out the contents of the speech.

Are there journalists using Dictaphone? Maybe, or maybe not: but they can still write down the speech or the contents of a press conference either in short hand (a dying language?) or in their own version (cryptic clues). But they would certainly not like to be dictated by the newsmakers however high or low or mean the politico could be.