Compared to the verb systems in many languages, the English verb system is actually quite messy

I wouldn't say that it is messy, rather I would say it is subtle. The main problem for foreign learners is that they are unused to making these distinctions in the verb.

And the expression of meaning in English through the verb isn't just confined to what traditionally comes under the heading of grammar.

English is very rich in verbs to express different nuances of action.

Thus you may walk, stagger, stride, pace, stroll, lurch, march, amble, saunter, trudge, pad, shamble, totter, saunter, tiptoe, trek, hike and so on (the list is by no means complete).

Such nuances may have to be expressed in Esperanto (and some other languages) with additional words.

sudanglo:I wouldn't say that it is messy, rather I would say it is subtle. The main problem for foreign learners is that they are unused to making these distinctions in the verb.

And the expression of meaning in English through the verb isn't just confined to what traditionally comes under the heading of grammar.

English is very rich in verbs to express different nuances of action.

Thus you may walk, stagger, stride, pace, stroll, lurch, march, amble, saunter, trudge, pad, shamble, totter, saunter, tiptoe, trek, hike and so on (the list is by no means complete).

Such nuances may have to be expressed in Esperanto (and some other languages) with additional words.

So under this idea, would you consider English as "one of those few languages suitable for poetry"? As in to say it is a language better suitable for expressing specific ideas compared to other languages?

I just got that idea from Game of Thrones when Daenerys Stormborn says Valyrian is her native tongue and "the only one suitable for poetry" and my initial response when watching it was, "When can I learn Valyrian?"

English's flexibility with regard to parts of speech (the same word may be noun, verb etc), together with its multiple near synonyms, large vocabulary and plethora of single syllabic words probably does make it easier to produce a particular rhythm and rhyme.

So, yes, good for songs, poetry, advertising slogans and catchy phrases.

However, paradoxically perhaps, the English character is orientated towards pragmatism and action, and dismissive of the arty-farty and high-falutin'.

It is this that may be responsible for English carrying so much meaning in the verb. After all, in any language the means of expression that develop are not divorced from what people want to talk about.

Incidentally, the fact that there are so many native speakers of English using the language for so many different purposes is clearly the explanation of why English is one of the richest and most subtle languages of the planet. Of course, this is hard luck for foreign learners obliged to learn it later in life.

januscogitatio:Thanks everyone,
This does help clear some of my language issues up. I suppose my greatest weakness is just not being a native speaker (but then again relatively no one is at this).

Not being a native speaker at Esperanto? In my experience, a fluent non-native Esperanto speaker will frequently speak with better grammar than someone who learned from their parents but never studied the grammar.

I would say that your biggest problem is trying to translate word for word from English. Like someone already said, we use "have" to form compound verb tenses in English (and that's also done in a lot of other languages) but we never do that in Esperanto, so forms of "havi" only refer to actual possession.

You have to think about the meaning rather than the words.

It sounds somewhat like you are jumping ahead to translation of very complex expressions without first mastering the fluent use of simple Esperanto verb forms. I have seen this in a lot of Esperanto students, especially if they have studied another language. They have lots of complex ideas to express and want to know how to say this and that. I don't mean to quash your enthusiasm, please do feel free to come and ask. But I also want to let you know that you may find the answers confusing, and I hope that you won't get discouraged by the confusion, because most of these kinds of complex expressions are things that will come to seem natural and relatively easy to figure out, once you have a firm basis in the simpler forms, and once you have some experience under your belt. It helps to read Esperanto literature and to pause and try to translate sentences back out to yourself. This provides you a method for reading something and understanding it (and seeing how Esperanto authors express themselves), then trying to put it back into educated English (i.e. the English is also not a word for word translation, it's the English you'd expect to find in an English literary work).

Try it. I think you will be surprised at the nuances of meaning that can be expressed in Esperanto, even without use of complex verbs.

I'm not sure how your Esperanto is, but try reading this story (it isn't very long) and translating it into normal English. See how many verb forms you end up with in English - and note the verb forms used throughout the story (spoiler -- the verb forms are almost nothing but simple -is, -as, -os forms, plus a lot of -ante situations).

januscogitatio:
To make your aid less enjoyable (sorry), could you please help me with the following (most of these are poetic):

Men have envied things ~= Viroj havas enviis ajxojn (leaving out "have" subtly means the men no longer envy anymore) or maybe: Viroj enviintas ajxojn

I'll try my hand at the phrases that haven't been addressed:

Viroj envias/enviis ajxojn. ~= Men envy/envied things.
I think the simplest forms capture the same poetic meaning of the english phrase, and the simple verb forms are preferred in Esperanto.

januscogitatio:
People making merry ~= Homoj farantas gajo (making is a verb, not an adjective, but this then translates to "people ARE making merry"; any way around that?)

This one is actually quite concise:
"Ĝojigantoj" = People who are making merry (Literally people who are making glad).

januscogitatio:
To die having made something is good~= Morti havanta faris ion estas bona (three verbs in a row ... ?)

"Morti, farinte ion estas bona." -- As others have said, the having ____ is conveyed with -inte. (also, havanta is not a verb, its an adjective)

januscogitatio:
There are worse things than being alone ~= Estas pli malbonaj ajxoj ol estantas sola

I often see this form for similar ideas:
Estas pli malbonaj aĵoj ol esti sola. -- There are worse things than to be alone.

We use -ing for other things besides the present participle, such as gerunds (this case) and verbal nouns (as in "The burning of the books" ). I've seen adverbial participles labeled as gerunds, but I can only find it documented here. But gerunds may act as nouns, and adverbial participles cannot (as far as I know). I might defer to the experts on this one with a new thread.

januscogitatio:
The rain is falling, ever falling / Falling like time, ever coming ~= La pluvo falantas, iam falanta (adj?) / Falantas (is falling) kiel tempo, iam venanta (adj?) (I suppose this is translated according to preference)

"La pluvo estas falanta, ĉiam falanta / Falanta kiel tempo, ĉiam venanta." -- If you're going for word-to-word translation, that is. Iam = sometime (ever, at some time), but ĉiam better suits the meaning as in always, ever. (get to know the correlatives). The "falantas" form is a contraction of "estas falanta", but it makes the ending of the word inconsistent (I'm assuming you want the repetition like in "falling, ever falling").

IMHO poetry is bad to begin learning with, since poets tend to break all the rules so they can look cool.

kaŝperanto:

januscogitatio:
People making merry ~= Homoj farantas gajo (making is a verb, not an adjective, but this then translates to "people ARE making merry"; any way around that?)

This one is actually quite concise:
"Ĝojigantoj" = People who are making merry (Literally people who are making glad).

I disagree with that. Ĝojigi means to make someone else happy. "making merry" means making *yourself* merry, not someone else. People making merry -- I would simply say "festantoj" or "gajuloj". Or to put it as a verb "Homoj festas" or "homoj gajumas" (gaja plus the -um- meaning, they are doing merry things)

"Morti, farinte ion estas bona." -- As others have said, the having ____ is conveyed with -inte. (also, havanta is not a verb, its an adjective)

This would need to be "estas bone". "Good" describes the verb "morti", so it has to be an adverb (-e) and not an adjective (-a).

januscogitatio:
There are worse things than being alone ~= Estas pli malbonaj ajxoj ol estantas sola

I often see this form for similar ideas:
Estas pli malbonaj aĵoj ol esti sola. -- There are worse things than to be alone.

Don't translate "thing" indiscriminately as "ajxo". The suffix -ajx- is overwhelmingly used in Esperanto to describe something concrete (this is part of its core meaning, a concrete manifestation of an abstract idea). Being alone, as a "thing", is not exactly what I'd call a concrete object that you can touch. "Afero" is a much more general word for "thing"; it can mean either something concrete, or else an abstract idea like solitude. In my experience, fluent speakers use "afero" much more frequently than "ajxo".

We talked about many things = Ni parolis pri multaj aferoj. (this is general - it can be either a concrete thing, an item, that we are discussing, or else an abstract "thing" like news or politics)

januscogitatio:
There are worse things than being alone

For "there are worse things than ...", I suggest: estas pli malbonaj sortoj ol ....

So this example would be:
Estas pli malbonaj sortoj ol esti sola

erinja:
I disagree with that. Ĝojigi means to make someone else happy. "making merry" means making *yourself* merry, not someone else. People making merry -- I would simply say "festantoj" or "gajuloj". Or to put it as a verb "Homoj festas" or "homoj gajumas" (gaja plus the -um- meaning, they are doing merry things)

Hmm, I should have looked up the phrase before commenting. I thought I knew what that it meant...

erinja:

kaŝperanto:
"Morti, farinte ion estas bona." -- As others have said, the having ____ is conveyed with -inte. (also, havanta is not a verb, its an adjective)

This would need to be "estas bone". "Good" describes the verb "morti", so it has to be an adverb (-e) and not an adjective (-a).

Oops, didn't see that one. Should not the English phrase be incorrect, then?

erinja:
Don't translate "thing" indiscriminately as "ajxo". The suffix -ajx- is overwhelmingly used in Esperanto to describe something concrete (this is part of its core meaning, a concrete manifestation of an abstract idea). Being alone, as a "thing", is not exactly what I'd call a concrete object that you can touch. "Afero" is a much more general word for "thing"; it can mean either something concrete, or else an abstract idea like solitude. In my experience, fluent speakers use "afero" much more frequently than "ajxo".

We talked about many things = Ni parolis pri multaj aferoj. (this is general - it can be either a concrete thing, an item, that we are discussing, or else an abstract "thing" like news or politics)

Add this to my list of words to watch out for
I like noelekim's suggestion:

noelekim:
For "there are worse things than ...", I suggest: estas pli malbonaj sortoj ol ....

kaŝperanto:

erinja:

kaŝperanto:
"Morti, farinte ion estas bona." -- As others have said, the having ____ is conveyed with -inte. (also, havanta is not a verb, its an adjective)

This would need to be "estas bone". "Good" describes the verb "morti", so it has to be an adverb (-e) and not an adjective (-a).

Oops, didn't see that one. Should not the English phrase be incorrect, then?

That's taken from a poem by Robinson Jeffers that I was attempting to translate (actually a few of these phrases are. (the title is "Wise Men in their Bad Hours" for anyone curious). The full line this comes from is "...But to die having made something more equal to the centuries than muscle or bone is mostly to shed weakness." And I didn't feel that it was necessary to include the entire phrase, only the part I was confused about. So it's possible that I made a mistake by replacing it with "good" and not "well" or something.

But all in all, thanks to everyone for helping me with this. I see Esperanto as not being as specific about the timing of events as English is. It's just something I'll have to work on but for now I have the basic foundation and gist of it. Although as kasxperanto also finds, the -ing ending of English may have more meanings than we thought, leading to our confusion into Esperanto.

Isn't it rather arrogant to state that English (which English?) is the most/best/greatest language on our planet? I teach English as a second language and I do not at all have this impression - but then again, I also do not have the impression that it is the worst or least expressive. Furthermore, in the USA we tend to use expressions such as "I have been to Egypt" less than do people from the other side of the Atlantic. Interestingly, this is mirrored by New World as opposed to Old World Spanish and Portuguese. I have been to Montreal several times but I didn't pay much attention to verb forms. But as for French, the wording for "I am going" is just different: je suis en train d'aller - in German: Ich gehe gerade...
Languages are NOT messy - they just have their own rules - Ebonics is often said to be a poor form of (American) English, but now that I studied it for a while, I see that it has some lovely verb forms that we need clauses to express in Standard American English. And if you really want to get into verbal forms (forms of verbs not just expressions that are verbal as opposed to written) study the Polynesian languages in which most adjectives are treated like Indo-European verbs.