Welcome to my pages!

Also known as “conlanging”. This is a particular hobby of mine, and if you ask me, an art as good as any, although most people are rather unfamiliar with the phenomenon (with the possible exception of Esperanto, Tolkien's languages and Klingon). To learn more, try David Peterson's Conlang Manifesto and Jesse Bangs' Artlang Rant. The art of language construction has always fascinated me. Especially since the Internet made its appearance, hundreds of constructed languages have been discovered or rediscovered, and thousands of new ones have been created. There are many different types of conlangs. With their number growing exponentially, there is also a deeper need to group them into subcategories. I have drafted a classification proposal in my article Classificatie van Kunsttalen (in Dutch).
A complilation of constructed language links can be found on http://kunsttalen.startkabel.nl.

Myself, I am the proud father of a few conlangs as well, four of which are pretty well documented on the net. Let me point out that they have been developed for their own sake only; it is not my intention to promote their actual usage (well, with one exception actually).

Interslavic (Medžuslovjanski) is simultaneously my only attempt at an auxiliary language the only collaborative project I've ever worked on. As the name suggests, it is a language based on what the Slavic languages have in common with each other, and intended to be readily understandable by speakers of any Slavic language. Now I would be lying if I told you Interslavic is something I created, because in fact Interslavic has been around since the XVIIth century. My part in it is rather limited: in 2006 the Slovianski project was started, and I was the author of a naturalistic version, called Slovianski-N. Afterwards, Slovianski-N was developed further into Slovianski, and Slovianski (along with other projects) became the base of Interslavic. The grammar of this language is practically identical that of similar older projects, but what really distinguishes today's Interslavic from its predecessors is that it has its own dictionary, constantly growing and currently counting more than 11,000 unique words.

Wenedyk (2002) demonstrates what Polish would have looked like if it had been a Romance language. It is essentially the result of applying the changes that made Polish develop from Common Slavic, on Vulgar Latin.
If you like this idea, you might as well have a look at its sister project, Šležan (2004).

Vozgian (1996; redone in 2003) is a North Slavic language that underwent some significant Uralic influence. Of course, North Slavic languages do not really exist in our world, but the idea has inspired several conlangers, including myself.

Hattic (1996) is a member of a fictional branch of the Indo-European language family, spoken in an unidentified republic somewhere in North Russia.

Poilschi (2005) is not a conlang, but an alternative, typically Romance orthography for the Polish language (and, mutatis mutandis, applicable to Wenedyk as well). It is based on what Polish has in common, phonologically speaking, with the Romance languages. Yes, much of my conlanging efforts are in one way or another related to Polish. Just for fun, I also developed a Cyrillic orthography for the Polish language (2008).

Brithenig is a language that is unfortunately not mine: it was created by Andrew Smith from New Zealand, and because Andrew's own site has been down for quite a while and probably will remain so for quite another while, it is my pleasure to host a mirror, so this this beautiful language can still be admired.

One more thing: to see a lot of conlangs in action, be sure to take a look at Conlang Translation Relay no. 10/R, which I had the pleasure of organising.

A constructed universe which I share the honour of participating in. In fact, it is not a constructed universe, but our own universe with an alternate history. Originally designed by Andrew Smith as a universe in which Wales and surroundings speak a Romance language, Brithenig, it has developed into the common effort of over thirty participants, each of whom has his own personal style of (re)writing history, (re)drawing maps and the like. This alternate history is not extremely different from ours, but contains a lot of “what ifs”, including a number of constructed languages.

My own responsibility within Ill Bethisad is Eastern Europe (under the link you will find links to individual countries and maps, mostly).

Of course, not all Eastern Europe is “mine”. My primary playing ground is the Republic of the Two Crowns, IB's contemporary equivalent of Poland-Lithuania. Follow the link for history, politics, maps, news items, etc.

Less elaborated but still mostly my work is Ill Bethisad's Russia. The crux of the story is that not the Bolsheviks but the Whites won the Civil War, which resulted in a fascistoid dictatorship called the “SNOR regime”.

In the same series, you will also find a page about Ukraine.

All there is to know about Ill Bethisad, you can find on its home page. Another comprehensive source, definitely worth a visit, is the IB Wiki.

Language creation is not my only artistic activity. I have written a number musical compositions as well, mostly for chamber ensembles and choir. You can see a list of my works here.

My father Hans van Steenbergen, who died in 1999 in a car crash, was quite prolific as a composer too. This space is reserved for a link to a page I will make in the future, dedicated to his work.

My father also had a sister, Molly Mackenzie. This site is dedicated to her work as a painter, and it's an honour to me to host it for her.

Then, here is the site of my beloved Ania. Hosted on my webspace and mostly dedicated to her writings. Heartily recommended to anyone who knows Polish.
But if you don't, or if you just want to know where all my money goes... then by all means pay a visit to her fashion blog: Fash-cinated.

Yes, I'm interested in the Real World as well. Since May 2006, I have been an editor of the Eastern Europe magazine Ablak. Go have a look! Also, I've been fairly active on Wikipedia.nl at times.

Another project I'm currently working on, is the Dutch translation of S@motność w Sieci by the Polish writer Janusz Leon Wiśniewski. Click here for a sample.

Pictures, mostly. The reason they are here is not that I hope to sell them via the Internet, but that putting them online is a hell of a lot easier than attaching them to individual e-mails (which, with our slow dial-up connection, is no fun at all). First of all, there here are some pictures of my lovely daughter Suzanne, made in October 2003, January 2004, and December 2004. My son Daniël was born in June 2005. And finally, here are some pictures from October/November 2005.

If you can think of a reason to get in touch with me, then don't hesitate to do so by dropping me an e-mail. If you happen to be using the Polish internet communicator Gadu-Gadu, you can reach me there, too: GG: 8594886. At last, you can also call me or drop me a note via Skype.

Jan van Steenbergen (in full: Johannes Hendrik van Steenbergen) is my real name. I belong to the lucky ones who have a preposition in their name - that is, if you like prepositions, of course. Unlike in German, it is an integral part of my surname and has nothing to do with nobility at all. Therefore, I don't like it when people address me as "Mr. Steenbergen", because that's not what I am. Steenbergen is a town in Noord-Brabant (never been there yet, unfortunately), and the name "Van Steenbergen" suggests that one of my ancestors must have hailed from that place. Although the town is large enough for my average countryman to have at least heard of it, I have encountered many misspellings of my name, both in the Netherlands and abroad. Mostly things like Steenberg, Steenberging, Steenberger, sometimes also worse, like Jan van Stenburgen. Not long ago someone even boldly turned it into Van September!

However, not every alternative spelling of my name is necessarily a mistake. According to the Latvian edition of Wikipedia, my name is Jans van Steenbergens, because that's what the Latvian language does. For the same reason, I'd probably be Janas van Steenbergenas (perhaps even Jonas) in Lithuania. And then we have the various transliterations from Cyrillic and other scripts. In Russian, I've seen my name transcribed as Ян ван Стейнберген, Ян ван Стеенберген, Ян ван Штейнберген and Ян ван Штеенберген. The Serbian newspaper Večernje Novosti wrote my name as Јан ван Стенберген, which in the Latin edition became Jan van Stenbergen (I asked if this was a mistake, but they assured me it wasn't). In Bulgarian it was turned into Ян ван Стинберген, which would transliterate back as Jan van Stinbergen, and I'm sure that is not correct.

Although the surname Van Steenbergen is neither particularly common nor particularly rare, my brother Frederik, my three children and I are the only surviving Van Steenbergens of our family, at least as far as I can trace back, which is about five generations. Any bloodties to other people carrying the same name are of course not impossible, but they are very thin at best.

I have never made a secret of my true identity on the Internet, but for login names, e-mail addresses and the like I usually refer to myself as IJzeren Jan, which translates as "Iron Jan". During my years as a student, instead of studying I used to play a lot of computer games (simple ones of course, because it's the late 1980s and the early 1990s we're talking about here), and whenever I made it into the highscores, I wrote either "IJzeren Jan" or "Kriegsherr Jan". And that's more or less how I became IJzeren Jan, even though I am a rather mild and quiet person in reality. Oddly, it took years before I found out that "IJzeren Jan" was also the nickname of Jan Pzn. Coen, a colonialist hardliner from the 17th century, who also happens to be a symbol of my native town Hoorn, a.k.a. "de Coenstad".