Talk:klant

klant versus cliënt

@Mnemosientje, Lambiam, Rua, Morgengave, DrJos, Voltaigne The usage note currently reads: "The difference between Dutch klant and cliënt is that the former buys goods and the latter pays for services." I think this gets fairly close to the actual distinction, but falls a little short of it.

Someone who contracts a plumber, tailor or electrician to repair something or visits a hairdresser, tattooist or prostitute typically is called a klant instead of a cliënt. It seems to me the latter is more typically reserved for people who use certain non-medical professional-class services, such as lawyers, mental-health counsellors, social workers, notaries or institutions of (primarily non-mental) care. Clients of banks or insurance companies can be called either. I'm not sure where patrons of dance schools, alternative medicine or courtesans would fall on this axis. I don't think it is common to use either term for a patron of the performing arts or cinemas.

If the phrasing is kept in more or less its current form, I think it should be noted that people who use non-mental medical services or goods are called patiënt, while a mental-health patient can be called both patiënt or cliënt, probably depending a little on the type of care. ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 12:42, 15 August 2020 (UTC)

Note also that cliëntèle means the collective of klanten of a shop or business and does not imply professional-class services. See also the second bullet under cliënt#Woordherkomst en -opbouw and the definitions on the Dutch Wiktionary. The distinction appears not to be a sharp one in practice. I think that in many or most contexts klant can be replaced by cliënt (with some risk, though, of suggesting affectation); the converse is rarer but increasingly more common. Only in court will a lawyer invariably refer to the defendant as mijn cliënt – in that context mijn klant is literally unheard.  --Lambiam 13:18, 15 August 2020 (UTC)

@Lambiam Yes, the distinction in the current version is far too definite. It's also noteworthy that cliënt was formerly more widely used for patients, apparently also for non-mental health; I was completely unaware of that (born late 1990s). I'd also say that klant and to a lesser degree cliënt have a relatively mercurial connotation, that might be why use in artistic contexts is less clear and why substituting klant for cliënt may sound crass. ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 13:34, 15 August 2020 (UTC)

I too was unaware of a wider use for patients and cannot find any such uses; this may be thoroughly outdated. This text from 1907–08 consistently uses patiënten.  --Lambiam 14:37, 15 August 2020 (UTC)

Apparently so. The WNT (from 1908) has it [1], though the quotes pertain to lawyers, and one can find cites for it from the 19th and early 20th c. without too much effort, some of them quite funny: [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] ←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 15:07, 15 August 2020 (UTC)