Participles as Adjectives

Afrikaans, like English, lets you press a verb into service as an adjective. A broken heart, running water, the written word — in each, a verb form is doing a describing job. Afrikaans builds these the same way, but with two twists English never warns you about: the participle takes the regular attributive -e ending, and a small set of these adjectives have a fossilised shape that no longer matches their own verb. Gebreek is the participle of breek (to break), yet the adjective is gebroke. That split — which most references quietly skip — is the heart of this page.

Two participles, two patterns

There are two participle families you can use attributively (directly in front of a noun):

• The past participle, built with ge- and an ending in -de or -te — die gekookte eier (the boiled egg).
• The present participle, built with -ende — lopende water (running water).

Both behave like ordinary attributive adjectives: they slot in front of the noun and carry the attributive -e. If you are shaky on when an attributive adjective takes that -e, read the attributive -e ending first, because participles obey exactly the same machinery.

Past participles as adjectives: -de or -te

A past participle used in front of a noun usually ends in -de or -te. The choice between them is not random — it follows the same voicing logic that governs participles and plurals everywhere in Afrikaans. After a voiced sound you get -de; after a voiceless sound you get -te.

Present participles as adjectives: -ende

The present participle ends in -ende and describes something in the act of doing the verb — lopende (running), stygende (rising), kokende (boiling, as it happens). It is far less common than in English, where -ing adjectives are everywhere; Afrikaans often prefers another construction. But the productive ones are worth knowing.

Note that kokende (boiling, present participle) and gekookte (boiled, past participle) are a clean minimal contrast: the water that is kokende is bubbling right now; the potato that is gekookte has already been cooked. Present participle = ongoing; past participle = completed result.

The fossils: gebroke, geslote, and friends

Here is the part competitors leave out. For a handful of very common verbs, the form you use as an adjective is older than — and different from — the form you use as a verb. These are fossils: frozen relics of an earlier participle that survived in adjectival use long after the verb itself moved on to a regular ge-... participle.

The clearest case is breek (to break):

• As a verb, the past participle is gebreek: Die glas het gebreek (The glass broke).
• As an adjective, the fossil is gebroke: 'n gebroke hart (a broken heart), gebroke Engels (broken English).

There is a beautiful subtlety here. Breek actually has two adjectival forms, split by meaning. The regular form gebreekte is alive and well for literal, physical breakage — gebreekte glas (broken glass), 'n gebreekte ruit (a broken windowpane), 'n gebreekte been (a fractured leg). But for the figurative sense, the fossil gebroke takes over: 'n gebroke hart (a broken heart), gebroke Engels (broken English). So you cannot say 'n gebreekte hart for the emotional sense — the idiom is gebroke. And on the verb side, neither adjective is used: Die glas het gebreek (the glass broke), never gebroke. Literal breakage → gebreekte; figurative → gebroke; the verb → gebreek. That three-way split is exactly the kind of distinction other references flatten.

These fossils overlap heavily with literary and formal register: geslote and geskrewe feel slightly elevated next to plain everyday alternatives, but they are fully current — geslote deure (closed doors) and die geskrewe pers (the written/print press) are ordinary collocations. For the broader story of how the ge- prefix works on the verb side, see the past participle ge- prefix and the past tense overview.

When the participle just stays bare

Not every verb produces a usable attributive participle, and Afrikaans frequently sidesteps the construction altogether with a relative clause — die brood wat gebak is (the bread that was baked) rather than forcing an awkward adjective. When a fixed participial adjective does not exist, a relative clause is the safe, natural fallback, and a native speaker will often prefer it even where a participle is technically available.

Common mistakes

Key takeaways

• Both past participles (ge-...-de/-te) and present participles (-ende) can stand attributively in front of a noun, taking the regular attributive -e ending.
• The -de versus -te choice tracks final-consonant voicing: voiceless sounds (k, p, t, s) take -te (gekookte, gewaste), voiced sounds and vowels take -de (gevulde, geroosterde).
• The present participle in -ende marks an ongoing action (kokende water); the past participle marks a completed result (gekookte eier).
• A few high-frequency verbs keep a fossilised adjective — gebroke, geslote, verlore, geskrewe — that survives only as an adjective and differs from the regular verbal participle (gebreek, gesluit, verloor, geskryf). With breek, the fossil gebroke covers the figurative sense (gebroke hart) while the regular gebreekte handles literal breakage (gebreekte glas).
• When no fixed participial adjective exists, fall back on a relative clause (die brood wat gebak is) — often the more natural choice anyway.