Die Personalabteilung hat meinen Urlaubsantrag für morgen genehmigt.

Personalabteilung is a feminine noun in German, so its nominative singular article is die.

• die Abteilung = the department
• Personalabteilung literally means personnel department, i.e. HR department

This sentence uses die Personalabteilung as the subject, so it stays in the nominative case.

This is the Perfekt tense, which is very common in spoken and everyday German.

It is formed with:

• an auxiliary verb: hat
• a past participle: genehmigt

So:

• hat genehmigt = has approved / approved

The full structure is:

• Die Personalabteilung hat ... genehmigt.

In English, this can correspond to either has approved or simply approved, depending on context.

In a normal German main clause, the conjugated verb goes in position 2, and in the Perfekt, the past participle usually goes to the end.

So the pattern is:

• Subject
  • auxiliary
    • other elements + past participle

Here:

• Die Personalabteilung = subject
• hat = conjugated auxiliary in second position
• meinen Urlaubsantrag für morgen = middle part
• genehmigt = past participle at the end

That final position is very typical in German.

Because Urlaubsantrag is the direct object of the verb genehmigen, so it must be in the accusative case.

Urlaubsantrag is masculine:

• nominative: mein Urlaubsantrag
• accusative: meinen Urlaubsantrag

So:

• Die Personalabteilung = subject
• hat meinen Urlaubsantrag genehmigt = approved my vacation request

For masculine nouns, mein changes to meinen in the accusative.

You learn the gender together with the noun:

• der Antrag = request/application

Since the head word of the compound is Antrag, the whole compound Urlaubsantrag is also masculine:

• der Urlaubsantrag

That is why the accusative form is meinen Urlaubsantrag.

It is a compound noun:

• Urlaub = vacation / leave
• Antrag = application / request

So Urlaubsantrag means something like:

• vacation request
• leave request
• request for time off

German uses compound nouns very often, and the last part usually determines the grammatical gender and the basic meaning category.

No. für morgen belongs with Urlaubsantrag.

So the meaning is:

• my vacation request for tomorrow

It does not mean:

• the HR department approved it tomorrow

In other words, morgen refers to the day requested off, not the time of approval.

Yes, sometimes, but the meaning can be a little less explicit.

Compare:

• meinen Urlaubsantrag für morgen = my leave request for tomorrow
• meinen Urlaubsantrag morgen = this sounds more like my leave request tomorrow, which could be misunderstood as referring to time rather than purpose

So für morgen is clearer here because it shows that the request concerns tomorrow.

German main clauses usually put the finite verb in second position.

Basic structure here:

1. Die Personalabteilung = first element
2. hat = finite verb in second position
3. meinen Urlaubsantrag für morgen = object phrase
4. genehmigt = past participle at the end

So the sentence follows a very normal German pattern.

Yes. German allows some flexibility, as long as the finite verb stays in second position in a main clause.

For example:

• Meinen Urlaubsantrag für morgen hat die Personalabteilung genehmigt.

This version emphasizes my vacation request for tomorrow.

But the original version is the most neutral and straightforward.

Most German verbs form the Perfekt with haben.

You usually use sein with:

• verbs of movement from one place to another
• verbs of change of state
• a few specific intransitive verbs

genehmigen is a normal transitive verb; it takes a direct object:

• etwas genehmigen = to approve something

So its perfect tense is:

• hat genehmigt

not ist genehmigt.

Yes. It is formed in the normal way for a weak verb:

• infinitive: genehmigen
• stem: genehmig-
• past participle: genehmigt

Many weak verbs form the participle with:

• ge-
  • stem + -t

Here it becomes genehmigt.

Because the verb genehmigen begins with the unstressed prefix ge-, and verbs with certain unstressed prefixes do not add an extra ge- in the participle.

So:

• infinitive: genehmigen
• participle: genehmigt

not:

• gegenehmigt

This is similar to other verbs with unstressed prefixes such as bezahlen → bezahlt or verstehen → verstanden.

Yes:

• Die Personalabteilung genehmigte meinen Urlaubsantrag für morgen.

That is grammatically correct, but in everyday spoken German, Perfekt is usually more common:

• Die Personalabteilung hat meinen Urlaubsantrag für morgen genehmigt.

The simple past (Präteritum) is more common in writing, storytelling, news style, and with certain very common verbs like sein, haben, and the modal verbs.

Yes. Personalabteilung is a normal and natural German term for the department that handles personnel or human-resources matters.

Depending on context, German speakers might also say:

• HR
• die Personalstelle (in some workplaces)
• die Personalabteilung

But Personalabteilung is standard and very clear.

Yes. If the object is already known, you could replace it with ihn, because Urlaubsantrag is masculine.

For example:

• Die Personalabteilung hat ihn genehmigt.

Here ihn means it and is in the accusative masculine.

Yes—this sentence is a great example of three very common German features happening together:

1. Verb-second word order

   • hat is in second position

2. Perfect tense with the participle at the end

   • hat ... genehmigt

3. Case marking on articles/possessives

   • meinen Urlaubsantrag shows masculine accusative

If you understand those three points, you understand a lot of everyday German sentence structure.