Das Abiturzeugnis meiner Cousine war sehr gut, weil sie in fast jedem Fach eine gute Note hatte.

Because meiner Cousine is in the genitive case, showing possession or a close relationship: Das Abiturzeugnis meiner Cousine = my cousin’s Abitur certificate / the Abitur certificate of my cousin.

In German, a feminine noun like Cousine is:

• Nominative: meine Cousine (subject)
• Accusative: meine Cousine (direct object)
• Dative: meiner Cousine
• Genitive: meiner Cousine

Here, the question is: Whose Abiturzeugnis? → (das Abiturzeugnis) meiner Cousine. That is a classic genitive relationship, so we use the genitive form meiner.

Formally, meiner Cousine could be dative or genitive feminine singular (they look the same). You decide by looking at function and what it depends on:

• Dative: usually governed by a preposition or a verb:

  • mit meiner Cousine – with my cousin (preposition mit takes dative)
  • ich helfe meiner Cousine – I help my cousin (verb helfen takes dative)

• Genitive: usually attached to a noun, showing possession or a close relation:

  • das Auto meiner Cousine – my cousin’s car
  • das Abiturzeugnis meiner Cousine – my cousin’s Abitur certificate

In the sentence, meiner Cousine is directly linked to the noun Abiturzeugnis, not to a preposition or verb, so it is genitive.

Yes, you can say:

• Das Abiturzeugnis von meiner Cousine war sehr gut.

Differences:

• meiner Cousine (genitive):

  • More formal and compact.
  • Very natural in written German.
  • Often preferred in more polished style.

• von meiner Cousine (preposition + dative):

  • Very common in everyday spoken German.
  • Slightly less formal, but absolutely correct.

Meaning-wise in this sentence they are effectively the same. For learners, using von + Dativ is often easier at first, but it’s good to be able to understand and use the genitive pattern too.

Because the sentence talks about a situation in the past: your cousin already did the Abitur, she had those grades, and the certificate was good at that time.

• war sehr gut → simple past, describing a past state.
• ist sehr gut would put the focus on a current evaluation: right now we consider it very good.

German often uses the simple past of sein (war) and haben (hatte) even in spoken language, especially in narratives. Saying:

• Das Abiturzeugnis meiner Cousine war sehr gut, …

is the most natural way to talk about her finished school career.

Because weil introduces a subordinate clause (a dependent clause). In German:

• In a main clause, the conjugated verb is in second position:

  • Sie hatte in fast jedem Fach eine gute Note.

• In a subordinate clause with a conjunction like weil, dass, wenn, obwohl, the conjugated verb goes to the end:

  • …, weil sie in fast jedem Fach eine gute Note hatte.

Structure of the subordinate clause:

• weil (subordinating conjunction)
• sie (subject)
• in fast jedem Fach (prepositional phrase)
• eine gute Note (object)
• hatte (finite verb at the end)

That verb-final rule is one of the key differences from English.

Because German always separates main clauses and subordinate clauses with a comma.

In this sentence you have:

• Main clause: Das Abiturzeugnis meiner Cousine war sehr gut
• Subordinate clause: weil sie in fast jedem Fach eine gute Note hatte

Rule: Main clause , weil subordinate clause
So the comma is mandatory, not optional.

The preposition in can take dative or accusative, depending on the meaning:

• Dative → location, no movement (where?):

  • in der Schule – in the school
  • in jedem Fach – in every subject (as a place/area)

• Accusative → direction, movement into (where to?):

  • in die Schule gehen – to go into the school
  • in jedes Fach legen – to put into each compartment

In the sentence, we are talking about where she had good grades: in almost every subject (a state, no movement). So we need dative:

• in fast jedem Fach (dative neuter singular)

in fast jedes Fach would sound like movement into each subject, which does not fit here.

Two different patterns are at work here.

1. jedem Fach

• Fach is neuter, dative singular after the preposition in.
• jed- already carries a strong ending:
  
  • dative neuter singular: jedem

• There is no separate adjective here, so the article-like word jed- takes the case/number/gender ending:

  • jedes Fach (nom./acc. neut. sg.)
  • jedem Fach (dat. neut. sg.)

2. eine gute Note

• Note is feminine, accusative singular (direct object in the subordinate clause).
• After eine (indefinite article), the adjective gets a weak -e ending in feminine accusative:
  • eine gute Note

Compare:

• die gute Note (definite article, fem. acc. sg.)
• eine gute Note (indefinite article, fem. acc. sg.)
• gute Noten (no article, plural → adjective must carry more “information”)

So:

• jedem Fach: determiner jed- shows case, gender, number.
• gute Note: article eine shows gender/case; adjective just gets a simple -e.

In German, adjectives before a noun must be declined (they get endings that show case, gender, and number).

Here we have:

• Noun: Note (feminine)
• Role: direct object → accusative
• Article: eine (feminine accusative singular)

Pattern for feminine nominative/accusative singular after eine is:

• eine gute Note

So the adjective gut takes -e → gute.

You can see the same in other examples:

• eine schöne Stadt
• eine interessante Frage
• eine große Schule

Without a noun afterwards, the adjective would stay uninflected:

• Die Note ist gut. (here gut is a predicate adjective, not before a noun)

Fach alone has a more general meaning:

• A specialist field or area (of study, work, etc.)
• In a school context, it is very commonly used to mean school subject.

Schulfach is more explicit:

• literally school subject.
• Often used in educational or formal contexts (e.g. lists: Schulfächer: Mathe, Deutsch, Englisch).

In everyday language, when talking about school, people usually just say Fach:

• Mein Lieblingsfach ist Englisch.
• Sie war in fast jedem Fach gut.

So in this sentence, Fach is perfectly natural as school subject.

In a school context:

• Note = grade / mark (usually a number from 1 to 6 in Germany)
  
  • eine gute Note → a good grade

Other words:

• Punktzahl = score / number of points

  • Typical for exams, tests, sports, etc.
  • Example: eine Punktzahl von 85 Punkten

• Zensur = older/less common term for grade, or censorship in other contexts.

  • For grades, Note is much more common today.
  • For censorship, Zensur is the usual word.

In this sentence, Note is the normal everyday word for school grade.

Yes, that is perfectly correct. The word order rules are:

1. In the weil-clause (subordinate clause), the verb stays at the end:

   • Weil sie in fast jedem Fach eine gute Note hatte, …

2. In the main clause that follows, the whole subordinate clause counts as position 1, so the finite verb of the main clause must come immediately after it (verb-second rule):

   • Weil sie in fast jedem Fach eine gute Note hatte, war das Abiturzeugnis meiner Cousine sehr gut.

So both orders are correct:

• Das Abiturzeugnis meiner Cousine war sehr gut, weil sie in fast jedem Fach eine gute Note hatte.
• Weil sie in fast jedem Fach eine gute Note hatte, war das Abiturzeugnis meiner Cousine sehr gut.

Same meaning, just a different focus and rhythm.

German grammatical gender is partly linked to meaning, but often it is arbitrary and must be learned with the noun.

In this sentence:

• das Abiturzeugnis

  • Zeugnis (certificate, report) is neuter: das Zeugnis.
  • The compound Abiturzeugnis keeps the gender of the last element (Zeugnis), so it is neuter: das Abiturzeugnis.

• die Cousine

  • This word refers to a female person, and such family terms are typically feminine: die Cousine.
  • With meine in genitive, it becomes meiner Cousine.

Gender is therefore determined by the individual noun:

• das Abiturzeugnis (neuter)
• die Cousine (feminine)

The fact that Cousine refers to a female person supports its feminine gender, but for many other nouns there is no such clear link, so you have to memorize the gender with the noun.