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Wat een giftige plant! We mogen hem niet eten.

Wat een giftige plant! We mogen hem niet eten.
What a poisonous plant! We must not eat it.
From Lesson 261:Exclamatory determiners (wat een, wat)·Dutch

Questions & Answers about Wat een giftige plant! We mogen hem niet eten.

Why does this sentence use wat een instead of just wat?
You use wat een (what a) for singular, countable nouns like plant. If you were exclaiming about plural plants or an uncountable noun like water, you would drop the een and just use wat (for example: wat mooie planten!).
Why is it giftige (with an -e) after een? Doesn't the adjective lose the -e there?
Adjectives after een only drop the -e ending if they modify a het-word. Because plant is a de-word (de plant), the adjective keeps its normal -e ending to become giftige.
Why does the translation say 'must not' when the Dutch sentence uses mogen (to be allowed)?
In Dutch, niet mogen expresses prohibition, which translates best to English 'must not' (you are not allowed to). If you used niet moeten, it would mean 'don't have to' (a lack of obligation), which is too weak of a warning for a poisonous plant!
Why do we use hem to refer to the plant instead of het?
Because plant is a de-word, you refer to it with the pronoun hem when it is the object of the sentence. You only use het to refer back to het-words.

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