What does "alhamdulillah" mean?

Search: alhamdulillah

Why: Lindsay has been traveling around the world photojournalisting, and if I am to believe her current Facebook stats, she is now living in Tunisia. She recently wrote:

Just. Submitted. MA. Thesis. alhamdulillah!
Now don't know whether to sleep or celebrate...

That word sure looks celebratory to me.

Answer: "Praise to Allah!" in Arabic! It's kind of like hallelujah, which means "praise to Yah." Let's talk about Hebrew:

• In the Torah, God's name is written like this: יהוה (called the tetragrammaton, "four letters"). Those letters (R to L) are "yud, hay, vav, hay."
  
• The Yehudim never say this word; when we see it in actual prayers, we pronounce it like "Adonai" ["my Lord"], but when we are just talking about ... prayers, we pronounce it like "HaShem" ["the Name"]. I don't know.)
• יהוה ("Yud, Hay, Vav, Hay") is sometimes written as YHVH (and also YHWH, because of how people pronounce things these days). This is why some people say things like "Yahweh."
• Latin interpretations use the four letters JHWH and JHVH, which is where we get the name Jehovah.
• Shawn Corey Carter uses the four letters "H to the izz-O, V to the izz-A," which is where we get the name Jayhova.
  

Anyway, my point is that since Jews don't say much in the way of "Yah," alleluia and hallelujah are terms used pretty strictly by Christians and drag queens.

Source: the Wikipedias

The More You Know: Wait, what was I talking about? In everyday speech, alhamdulillah is used to mean something like "thank God," but it's also used in other situations, like after sneezing and as a response to "How are you?" (Alhamdu lillahi, "Thank God, I am fine").

Salaam. Shalom.