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/ .
Tsolyáni is one of several languages invented by M. A. R. Barker, developed in the mid-to-late 1940s in parallel with his legendarium leading to the world of Tékumel as described in the Empire of the Petal Throneroleplaying game, published by TSR in 1975. It was the first constructed language ever published as part of a role-playing game and draws its inspiration from Urdu, Pashto, Mayan and Nahuatl. The last influence can be seen in the inclusion of the sounds hl[ɬ] and tl[tɬ]. One exact borrowing from a real-world source is the Tsolyáni noun root sákbe, referring to the fortified highways of the Five Empires; it is the same word as the Yucatec Mayasacbe, referring to the raised paved roads constructed by the pre-ColumbianMaya. Another close borrowing is from the Nahuatl word tlatoani, referring to a leader of an Aztec state (e.g. Montezuma); it is similar to the clan-name of the Tsolyáni emperors, Tlakotáni.
Tsolyáni is written in an offshoot of the Engsvanyáli script which was developed by Barker in parallel with the language, being very close to its modern-day form by 1950. It is read from right-to-left and is constructed like the Arabic script. The consonants each have 4 different forms: isolate, initial, medial, and final; the 6 vowels and 3 diphthongs each only have an independent initial form, while diacritical marks are used for medial and final vowels. Find out more...
