"He found none of the hats."

Translation: Er hat keinen der Hüte gefunden.

[MatiasAlme12]

Could it be: Er hat keine Hüte gefunden?

[quis_lib_duo]

The sentence given by DL speaks about a specific set of hats that have not been found (therefore the definite article in both English and German), your sentence translates as He did not find any hats.

[masterbeta1]

Why "keinen" though???

Accusative masculine singular... but referring to what? - the gentive plural Hüte??

Or does "gefunden" cause some kind of dative plural case from all the way at the end there?

Good gosh - it seems I'll only ever be able to speak shirty German, and right now, I'm ok with that.

[Paolo93008]

Imagine the genitive "die Hüte" wasn't there. "Er hat keinen (Hut) gefunden", he didn't find a hat. Now the only difference to make the sentence above is that this hat that he didn't find is part of a given collection ;-)

Well, that's my story!

[Caty-Canady]

Welcome to the ❤❤❤❤❤❤ German Club! At least it gives one's German-speaking friends a good laugh once in a while, and occasionally I get the joke too ;) Enjoy the ride! It is indeed a long one... :)

[BenHartman1]

Can someone explain what forces the dative case when this sentence is negative, but if this sentence was positive I believe it would be "Er hat die Hüte gefunden"? Thanks!

[tsnix]

Unless I misunderstand what's going on in this sentence, there's nothing dative here. "Der Hüte" is genitive. It's not changing because of "none" (the "positive"/"negative" distinction you made), but rather because of "of". If, as was asked about elsewhere in this thread, the sentence was "He has found no hats" instead of "none of the hats", you'd use the accusative ("keine Hüte").

[Gwen320]

I wrote “Er hat keine Hüte gefunden.“ duolingo said it is wrong

[BaSsGaz]

Check first comment above!