Answers
Oct 21, 2012 - 03:02 AM
German is one of the languages that uses double negation ("no...no"). If you said einen versus keinen, Germans wouldn't cringe or bother correcting you, but technically its not grammatically correct.
Oct 21, 2012 - 05:59 AM
As a native speaker I only can answer, that your translation and the Fluenz one are not really different. "Man kann einen Hut nicht waschen." is perhaps a little more general and the literally translation of the sentence, whereas "Man kann keinen Hut waschen." would be literally translated to English "One can wash no hat." So your translation could be suitable as a statement used in idioms and I would prefer it more than the other one.
Dec 05, 2012 - 11:50 AM
In the audio component of that session, it is explained when we need to use Kein / nicht .Any statement where we can replace with " any " require Kein .So in the sentence " one can't wash a hat" (or say one cant wash any Hat )u can use only Kein and not nicht. Hope that explanation helps.