I have some difficulty reading very high-level Esperanto, such as novels or complicated texts. Websites, magazines, etc are not a problem except for the occasional unknown word.

Once you can comfortably read the Aeneid in Esperanto, I think you've mastered the written language. I consider myself quite proficient, and yet it took me a bit to digest the first two verses - the stuff is as archaic and confusing as Lomonosov or Shakespeare ...

Good think about esperanto for the croats is that the ortogrphy is the same . For example č ,š and the all other letters . It is pronounced as it written just like croatian so we have not problemme with reading or wrtenig it .

jdawdy:
I have some difficulty reading very high-level Esperanto, such as novels or complicated texts.

Well, rather a lot of people can't read such things in their native language.

It's not surprising that people who can't read anything more complex than a twitter message in their first language are unable to read serious literature in a second language.

(Not saying that's you, but a lot of people ...)

jdawdy:I've spoken Russian for 15 years, lived in the former Soviet Union, worked in all-Russian workplaces, and have been married to a Russian speaker- and I'm still only intermediate in Russian.

I was in French immersion in Elementary school for 4 years and I took it part time in Junior High School. I tried a little bit of self study of French when I was in University. I still can't understand anything. I am still a total beginner.

And one shouldn't forget that even a basic command of Esperanto is likely to exceed the command of English that you might encounter in your foreign travels - even where you might expect a certain mastery of English (eg in hotel staff or at information desks, or other typical points of contact for travelling tourists).

sudanglo:And one shouldn't forget that even a basic command of Esperanto is likely to exceed the command of English that you might encounter in your foreign travels - even where you might expect a certain mastery of English (eg in hotel staff or at information desks, or other typical points of contact for travelling tourists).

For some reason I keep re-reading your post and adding more layers of meaning in my head. Do you mean that someone speaking basic Esperanto will have a better command of it than any English they speak?

Also are you referring to travel in general or specifically within Esperanto circles?

For a native English speaker, we may estimate that Esperanto is about five times as easy to learn as Spanish or French, ten times as easy to learn as Russian, twenty times as easy to learn as Arabic or spoken Chinese, and infinitely easier to learn than Japanese. Many people find that they speak Esperanto better after a few months' study than a language they learned at school for several years.
http://www.esperanto.net/veb/faq-2.html

sudanglo:And one shouldn't forget that even a basic command of Esperanto is likely to exceed the command of English that you might encounter in your foreign travels - even where you might expect a certain mastery of English (eg in hotel staff or at information desks, or other typical points of contact for travelling tourists).

It is all true. Speaking English I am never at home. I am always afraid of unintentional errors I could make. That prohibits my expressiveness a lot. So I try to speak as simply as I can not to get into trouble.

I don't think there is a "perfectly".

A series of lessons on Old Norse has this at the beginning:

Language learning is gradual, piece-by-piece, sometimes fast, sometimes slow, often rewarding, often frustrating. There is no black and white in language learning, no set stage where one "speaks the language", before which one understood and spoke nothing, after which one understands and speaks everything. It's an open-ended process, from which one can enter and exit at will, always benefitting from every minute effort. How this relates to our course, is to make you understand that you will not exit from it completely fluent in Old Norse, having "finished" that language, because there is no finish line; but neither will you have wasted your time, because time invested in language study is never "lost".

Bruso:I don't think there is a "perfectly".

A series of lessons on Old Norse has this at the beginning:

Language learning is gradual, piece-by-piece, sometimes fast, sometimes slow, often rewarding, often frustrating. There is no black and white in language learning, no set stage where one "speaks the language", before which one understood and spoke nothing, after which one understands and speaks everything. It's an open-ended process, from which one can enter and exit at will, always benefitting from every minute effort. How this relates to our course, is to make you understand that you will not exit from it completely fluent in Old Norse, having "finished" that language, because there is no finish line; but neither will you have wasted your time, because time invested in language study is never "lost".

No. There is no "perfect" in languages. I like this quote about the Norse course.