Learn Hardcore German: Meine Freundin hat ihre Bewerbungsmappe gestern abgeschickt und wartet nun auf eine Antwort. - My friend sent off her application folder yesterday and is now waiting for an answer.

meine = feminine nominative singular (my)
meiner = feminine dative / feminine genitive / plural genitive form, so it would be wrong for the subject.

Pattern (nominative singular):

mein Freund (masc.)
meine Freundin (fem.)
mein Kind (neuter)

So: Meine Freundin = my (female) friend / girlfriend is doing the action → nominative → meine.

Does Freundin always mean “girlfriend,” or can it also mean just a female friend?

Freundin can mean either:

girlfriend (romantic partner), or
(female) friend (non-romantic),

depending on context, intonation, and sometimes age or situation.

In everyday speech:

meine Freundin (said by an adult) is very often understood as my girlfriend.
If someone wants to be very clear it’s not romantic, they may say eine gute Freundin von mir (a good (female) friend of mine).

German doesn’t have a separate everyday word that clearly splits “female friend” and “girlfriend”; Freundin covers both.

Why is Bewerbungsmappe written as one long word and what does it mean exactly?

German loves compound nouns. Bewerbungsmappe is:

Bewerbung = application (usually for a job, training, or university place)
Mappe = folder / file

So Bewerbungsmappe literally = application folder.

Culturally, it refers to a (often neatly prepared) folder containing:

cover letter (Anschreiben)
CV (Lebenslauf)
certificates, references, etc. (Zeugnisse)

It’s more than just “application” in the abstract; it’s the physical or digital package of documents.

What tense is hat … abgeschickt, and why is the verb split like that?

hat … abgeschickt is the Perfekt (present perfect) tense in German.

auxiliary (conjugated verb) → hat (from haben)
past participle → abgeschickt

The base verb is abschicken (to send off) and it is separable:

Present: Sie schickt die Mappe ab. (The particle ab goes to the end.)
Perfekt: Sie hat die Mappe abgeschickt. (The ge goes between ab and schickt.)

So the sentence uses Perfekt, which is very common in spoken German to talk about past, completed actions:

Meine Freundin hat … abgeschickt = My friend sent off / has sent off …

Why is the adverb gestern placed between ihre Bewerbungsmappe and abgeschickt? Could it go somewhere else?

Yes, gestern (yesterday) is flexible, as long as you respect the verb positions.

In the sentence:

Meine Freundin (first position)
hat (finite verb, must be in 2nd position)
ihre Bewerbungsmappe gestern (middle field)
abgeschickt (past participle at the end)

You could say:

Meine Freundin hat gestern ihre Bewerbungsmappe abgeschickt.
Gestern hat meine Freundin ihre Bewerbungsmappe abgeschickt.

All are correct. The usual neutral pattern for adverbs is roughly time – manner – place, but adverbs like gestern can move around for emphasis or style.

What you cannot do is move hat or abgeschickt out of their required positions in this main clause structure.

Why is ihre Bewerbungsmappe in that form? What case and gender are used here?

Bewerbungsmappe is:

gender: feminine
case: accusative (it’s the direct object of abschicken)

So we need the feminine accusative form of the possessive ihr (her):

nominative fem. → ihre (e.g. ihre Freundin kommt)
accusative fem. → also ihre (e.g. Sie schickt ihre Mappe ab.)

Here:

subject: Meine Freundin (nominative)
verb: hat … abgeschickt
direct object: ihre Bewerbungsmappe (accusative feminine)

That’s why it’s ihre, not ihrer or ihren.

Whose Bewerbungsmappe is it? Could ihre mean something else?

In context, ihre Bewerbungsmappe refers back to meine Freundin, so it means her application folder.

Forms of ihr / ihre can be ambiguous in general:

ihr / ihre = her
ihr / ihre = their (depending on ending)
Ihr / Ihre (capitalized) = your (formal “Sie”)

Here, ihre is lowercase, and the most natural antecedent in the sentence is meine Freundin, so we read it as her.

Why is the second part wartet nun auf eine Antwort in the present tense and not also in the perfect (like hat gewartet)?

The sentence describes two different time frames:

hat … abgeschickt → completed past action (yesterday)
wartet nun → ongoing present situation (she is waiting now)

Using Perfekt again (hat … gewartet) would suggest the waiting is also completed, which is the opposite of what we want.

So:

Meine Freundin hat … abgeschickt = She sent it off (finished).
… und wartet nun … = and is now waiting (still happening).

This mix of past (Perfekt) and present is logical and very natural in German.

What is the nuance of nun compared to jetzt?

Both nun and jetzt can mean now, but:

jetzt → the most common everyday word for “now”
nun → slightly more formal, often used in written German or storytelling, and can suggest “now (as a consequence of what just happened)”

In this sentence, nun nicely connects the two actions:

She sent it off → and now (as a result) she is waiting.

You could also say:

… und wartet jetzt auf eine Antwort.

That would be perfectly correct, just a bit more colloquial/neutral.

Why do we say auf eine Antwort warten and not something like für eine Antwort warten?

In German, the verb warten (to wait) normally takes the preposition auf with the accusative:

auf etwas / jemanden warten = to wait for something / someone

Examples:

Ich warte auf den Bus. (I’m waiting for the bus.)
Wir warten auf dich. (We’re waiting for you.)
Sie wartet auf eine Antwort. (She is waiting for an answer.)

Using für here (für eine Antwort warten) is wrong in standard German.

Preposition + case:

auf + Akkusativ → auf eine Antwort (feminine accusative eine)

Why is it eine Antwort and not einer Antwort or einen Antwort?

Antwort is:

gender: feminine
role here: object of the preposition auf → auf always takes accusative in this usage
accusative feminine singular → eine

So:

nominative: eine Antwort
accusative: eine Antwort (same form)
dative: einer Antwort
genitive: einer Antwort

Since auf requires accusative here, the correct form is eine Antwort, not einer or einen.

Why is there no comma before und in this sentence?

The structure is:

Subject: Meine Freundin
Predicate 1: hat ihre Bewerbungsmappe gestern abgeschickt
Predicate 2: wartet nun auf eine Antwort
Joined by und

Both predicates share the same subject (Meine Freundin), which is only mentioned once. In this case, German spelling rules say:

Generally, no comma is used when two predicates share the same subject and are linked by und or oder.

A comma would be standard if there were two full main clauses each with its own (stated) subject, for example:

Meine Freundin hat ihre Bewerbungsmappe gestern abgeschickt, und sie wartet nun auf eine Antwort.

Here you could (and usually would) add the comma.

Could we also say Meine Freundin schickte ihre Bewerbungsmappe gestern ab instead of hat … abgeschickt?

Yes, grammatically that’s correct. That uses the Präteritum (simple past):

schickte … ab = simple past of abschicken

However, in modern spoken German (especially in southern and western regions), people normally prefer Perfekt for most verbs:

hat … abgeschickt sounds more natural in conversation.
schickte … ab can sound more written, formal, or literary.

In written narratives (novels, reports, etc.) the Präteritum is more common. For everyday speech and many types of writing, hat … abgeschickt is the usual choice.