Johannes Hendrik "Jan" van Steenbergen (; born June 3, 1970) is a Dutch translator and interpreter. He is known for being the author of several

constructed language A constructed language (shortened to conlang) is a language whose phonology, grammar, orthography, and vocabulary, instead of having developed natural language, naturally, are consciously devised for some purpose, which may include being devise ...

s, notably Interslavic and Wenedyk. He was born in

Hoorn Hoorn () is a List of cities in the Netherlands by province, city and Municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality in the northwest of the Netherlands, in the Provinces of the Netherlands, province of North Holland. It is the largest town an ...

, where he spent most of his childhood. In 1988 he became a student at the Amsterdam University, where he graduated in East European Studies with major topics in

Slavistics Slavic (American English) or Slavonic (British English) studies, also known as Slavistics, is the academic field of area studies concerned with Slavic peoples, languages, literature, history, and culture. Originally, a Slavist or Slavicist was ...

and

musicology Musicology is the academic, research-based study of music, as opposed to musical composition or performance. Musicology research combines and intersects with many fields, including psychology, sociology, acoustics, neurology, natural sciences, ...

. He continued his studies in Poland at Warsaw University and worked at the Warsaw Autumn festival for contemporary music. In 1997, he became a Polish translator and interpreter in the

Netherlands , Terminology of the Low Countries, informally Holland, is a country in Northwestern Europe, with Caribbean Netherlands, overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Nether ...

. In 1996, he started work on an artificial North Slavic language, ''Vuozgašchai'' (Vozgian), and in 2002 he created another language, Wenedyk, designed to show what Polish might have looked like if it had been a Romance rather than

Slavic language The Slavic languages, also known as the Slavonic languages, are Indo-European languages spoken primarily by the Slavic peoples and their descendants. They are thought to descend from a proto-language called Proto-Slavic, spoken during the Ear ...

. In 2006, he was one of the initiators of the Pan-Slavic language Slovianski (later renamed Interslavic), as well as the coordinator of a project for the creation of an electronic Interslavic dictionary. In November 2013, he was awarded the Josef Dobrovský medal for his 'contributions to Slavic culture and science'. In 2018 he also received the medal "The Living Word" of the Khovansky Foundation. Van Steenbergen lives in IJmuiden. He is married and has three children.

References

External links

*
Towards a Unified Slavic Language
— Lecture at the Fourth Language Creation Conference, Groningen 2011 on

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Steenbergen, Jan van 1970 births 21st-century Dutch translators Constructed language creators Linguists from the Netherlands University of Amsterdam alumni People from Hoorn Living people