"Ich habe das Wasser untersucht."

Translation: I examined the water.

[sufferingrules]

Why is "I have the water examined" incorrect?

[Lenkvist]

Word order. Your word order can actually change the meaning of the sentence as "I'll have the water examined" or "I'm having the water examined" means that you ask someone else to examine it for you.

[hsanivaram]

should it not be like this: Ich habe untersucht das wasser?

[christian]

No.

[hsanivaram]

Please explain why? Danke!

[christian]

http://www.dartmouth.edu/~german/Grammatik/WordOrder/WordOrder.html

[Breakerrr]

When you use past tense, "have examined", the second verb is placed at the end of the sentence.

[honglog]

How do I say "I have the water examined."?

[backtoschool]

You better not say this in English, because it is actually not correct!

In this case "habe" is an auxiliary verb which can also be dropped to make it: "Ich untersuchte das Wasser."

In English it is not even needed, that's why you shouldn't use it here.

Hope that explains it!?

You may also say: "I'll have the water examined" , or "I will have the water examined"

"Ich werde das Wasser untersucht haben." or

"Ich lasse das Wasser untersuchen", or better

'Ich werden das Wasser untersuchen lassen."

Word order is an important thing! It may change the meaning completely.

Edit: worth reading this. {context is key}
http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=2512254

[Daria2VA]

I disagree. You could say, "I have the water examined." However, it would probably be part of a conversation that gave it some context as in, "I have the water examined by a chemist every week."

[christian]

It's perfectly fine, but it's not what the German sentence means. The German for "I have the water examined" is "Ich lasse das Wasser untersuchen".

[Daria2VA]

Thanks Christian. Thanks to duolingo, I now know how to use the passive in German!

I was really commenting on backtoschool's remark that you can't say "I have the water examined" in English...because you can.

[backtoschool]

Well, you are right, correction to my above comment,
but you will hear me talking like this:

" I have the water examined." for Ich habe das Wasser untersucht.

"I go and have the water examined; "I'll go and ...; "I will have the water examined." I will let someone examine the water.

for the intention of having the water examined. :-)

Thanks for correction.

[enjaunderwater]

hey, but.. how can you "examine" water? wouldn't be better to replace it with "test"?

[christian]

No, it's absolutely fine.

http://www.umass.edu/tei/mwwp/acrobat/sm9010-40intro.PDF

[enjaunderwater]

Alright, once again thanks for your help!

[bogg22]

Wow there is a huge variety of German verbs for testing/examining/checking

[bogg22]

Come to think of it what are the differences between untersuchen, prüfen and überprüfen?