I’m Jacob — middle-aged, married, father of five, learning Levantine Arabic the slow way: as an adult, in the cracks between family and work.
Daily Derja started as a Tunisian Arabic practice blog. Life pulled me northward, so it became نسمة شامية — a Shami breeze through my day. You’ll still find Tunisian notes and older posts in the archive; that’s part of the path and I’m keeping it.
The whole thing runs on one rule: keep it small. A photo, a sentence, a word, a moment — unpolished, practical, consistency over polish. It’s how I keep moving, keep learning, and breathe a little every day.
New here? The best place to begin is Start Here — it explains what the journal is and how to read along. And if you want the rest of me, that lives over at jacob-shore.com.
Slowly, slowly — شوي شوي — نسمة بنسمة.