The Aleph has Quiesced!

This mp3 music file is truly worth downloading! VTS's own Adam Thomas composed and performed this song near the conclusion of my summer Hebrew course. It is a spectacular humorous celebration of the joys and struggles of Beginning Biblical Hebrew. Thanks so much for this gift, Adam!

To download the free mp3 music file, right-click here and then click: "save target as..."

Here are the actual lyrics:

The Aleph has Quiesced, by Adam Thomas

The entire class is stressed ‘cause the aleph has quiesced

And we never would have guessed that the Masoretic text

Has so many dots and squiggles that we’re all reduced to giggles

Like we’re all on laughing gas.

We try to learn a way to find every dagesh forte

mappiq in ending-He and which of the shewas to say

There are no letter vowels and so many sound like growls

That we wonder if we’ll pass.

Woah-oh...Woah-oh...

Our glottal stops are wrong and our Pe’s are poorly drawn

The tetragrammaton has all its vowels gone

Some compensatory lengthening,

add a doubling dot for strengthening

See that wandering dagesh left.

The article has hid, squeezed out by that lamed

And the furtive pathah slid, from left to right it did

All we do is stammer when we try to use this grammar

We’re feeling quite bereft.

A king, the king, to a king, to the king, let’s sing,

did you bring your Weingreen?

My horse, your horse, male horse, female horse,

this course is the source of bad dreams!

In Hebrew without fail, the words all start off male

And the vowels look like Braille,

it makes us want to wail

This language when created was triliteral agluttonated

And the roots are so hard to find

We’re all going insane when we add the construct chain

And double up on Bane, oh pronouns are a pain

We’re getting quite obsessive about which one is possessive

In our daily Hebrew grind.