I'm not a person who likes talking about himself, so I will limit myself to the necessary. My real name is Jan van Steenbergen, I was born on June 3, 1970 (on the same day when Hjalmar Schacht died), and I live in Zaandam, near Amsterdam. Educated as a specialist on Eastern Europe, mainly Poland, I've worked as a journalist, as a translator, and (currently) as a software engineer in a bank. My main interests are: Poland and Ukraine; language, particularly constructed languages; Classical music; history. I am mostly active in the Dutch Wikipedia, under user name IJzeren Jan. Here I will probably mostly be dealing with interwiki links, and perhaps small modifications of existing articles. Also, I might dig up interesting stuff to translate into Dutch or Polish.
My user name, IJzeren Jan literally means Iron Jan. How so? Well, during my student years I used to play computer games from time to time, and "IJzeren Jan" was one of my favourite nicknames I used in highscores. Later I almost automatically used it in my e-mail address, and now as my Wikipedia user name. Only much later I learnt that IJzeren Jan was also the nickname of my famous countryman Jan Pieterszoon Coen, who also happens to be the symbol of my native town Hoorn.
I am the author of several constructed languages, two of which, Wenedyk and Interslavic, are listed in the English wiki. More about this and other things can be found on my home page, http://steen.free.fr/ .
Toki Pona is an oligoisolating constructed language, created by Canadian linguist and translator Sonja Lang as a philosophical language for the purpose of simplifying thoughts and communication. It was first published online in 2001 as a draft, and later in complete form in the book, Toki Pona: The Language of Good, in 2014. A small community of speakers developed in the early 2000s, and has continued to grow larger over the years, especially after the release of the official book. While, activity mostly takes place online in chat rooms, on social media, and in other groups, there have been a few organized in-person meetings in recent years.
The underlying feature of Toki Pona is minimalism. It focuses on simple universal concepts, making use of very little to express the most. The language has 120–125 root words and 14 phonemes that are easy to pronounce across different languages. Although not initially intended as an international auxiliary language, it may function as one. Inspired by Taoist philosophy, the language is designed to help users concentrate on basic things and to promote positive thinking, in accordance with the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis. Despite the small vocabulary, speakers are able to understand and communicate with each other, mainly relying on context and combinations of several words to express more specific meanings. Find out more...
