In English language, participles serve two purposes:

1. They act as adjectives
2. They help form verb tenses

In Nigerian Pidgin, participles only act as adjectives. They are not used to form tenses. When forming tenses in Nigerian Pidgin, we only use the bare infinitive/base form of verbs.

Participles as adjectives

Here are some example sentences using participles as adjectives:

• Yu don inhale laughing gas before?
  • Have you inhaled laughing gas before?
• I go like buy flying car wen I get money.
  • I’d like to buy a flying car when I become rich.
• Roasted corn dey slap with coconut.
  • Roasted corn goes well with coconut.
• Broken glass déy di floor.
  • There’s broken glass on the floor.

Participial phrases

Participial phrases are phrases that use the participle form of a verb to describe a noun. They are a type of adjective phrase. An example of a participial phrase is “Launched in the first quarter of last year” from the English sentence “Launched in the first quarter of last year, the product has amassed over a million paid subscribers.”

As you may have noticed, the example sentence is in English rather than Nigerian Pidgin. This is because Nigerian Pidgin lacks participial phrases. If you want to express the same idea in Nigerian Pidgin, you need to use a different grammatical strategy such as relative clauses or full/finite subordinate clauses.

So the above example sentence would be translated as follows in Nigerian Pidgin:

Di product, wey dem launch for first quarter of last year, don amass over one million paid subscribers.

Below are some more examples:

Using relative clauses

• Known for his flair, Emeka always finds one-on-one situations where he can showcase his football skills.
  • Emeka, wey déy popular for im flair, dey always find one-on-one situations wer e go fit showcase im football skills.
• Frightened by the banging sound, the girl hid under the bed.
  • Di girl, wey bin déy frightened by di banging sound, bin hide under di bed.
• Waiting for his parents to arrive, Adamu played videos games in the living room.
  • Adamu, wey bin dey wait mek im parents arrive, bin dey play video games for di living room.
• The man wearing the pink shirt is my brother.
  • Di man, wey dey wear pink shirt, na my brother.

Using full/finite subordinate clauses

• My friend found me searching for my keys at the office.
  • My friend bin find me as I dey search for my keys for di office.
• Not knowing whether it would work, the computer programmer ran his software for the first time.
  • Di computer programmer bin run im software for di first time, even though e no sabi weda e go work.
• Having eaten authentic jollof in Nigeria, Emily stopped enjoying what was on offer in America.
  • Emily bin stop to dey enjoy wetin déy on offer for America after she chop authentic jollof for Naija.
• Dressed in the outfit chosen by her parents, Sade covered her face so people wouldn’t see her.
  • Sade bin cover ha face mek people no see ha as she bin wear di outfit wey ha parents choose.

Gerund phrases

Gerund phrases are phrases that consist of a gerund and any modifiers or objects associated with it. They function as a noun in a sentence. Participial phrases may be confused with gerund phrases because they both use present participles (i.e. the verb form ending in “ing”).

It’s quite straightforward to translate sentences with gerunds from English to Nigerian Pidgin. For example:

• Diving is what I do in my free time.
  • Diving na wetin I dey do for my free time.

When dealing with gerund phrases, it’s often more idiomatic to restructure the sentence like so:

• Running every morning is what keeps me healthy.
  • Wetin dey keep me healthy be sey I dey run every morning.