sudanglo:But, of course, comprehensible doesn't mean elegant or most pleasing to the ear.

That's very subjective!

Roch:Those sounds are from slavic languages, they are represented in latin script by š, č, ž and dž!... and ch for the esperanto ĥ.

(Would there be some clarity to win in using the english sh, ch, zh, dzh, and kh substitutes? I very doubt so! )

Yes, I know the letters come from slavic pronunciation. What I would like to see is to abolish some of the sounds to make it simpler. I have very hard time to distinguish between ĉ and ĝ and ĵ. Like in aĉa or aĝa?

In ideal case (for me) E-o would have only s, g and j with current pronunciation. No sibilants nor t+s compounds (c). (Ĥ is a dead sound anyway.) But I understand that that's too radical, so I welcome any reduction among those sounds.

And it's not just me. Those sounds are hard for everyone who happens to speak as a native language a language which doesn't have them.

Somewhat off-topic:
On the other hand I can easily distinguish and pronounce many double vowels (where double vowel does not denote stress) and diphthongs: aa, ae, ai, ao, au, ee, ei, eo, eu... yy, yä, yö, äy, ää, äö, öy, öä, öö. (And there is always the funny gag to make a non-Finnish speaker to pronounce the word hääyöaie, intenco pri por edziĝa nokto.)

Just a couple weeks ago a student had trouble with the pronunciation of “accessible,” so I wrote it out as [äksesibl] and he got it right away.

link

There might be some teaching tricks here and there, that esperantists can profit of...

Godilovetofu:1. 'o' I know should be /o/ however I struggle with this and it often comes out as /ɔ/
2. Same for 'e'. Sometimes I get lucky and I think it sounds like /e/ but sometimes it's /ɛ/ instead

Sounds perfect to me. If you take a look at the Fundamento of the language you find the definition of the vowels in five languages: French, English, German, Russian and Polish. The phoneme /o/ represented as < o > is defined in French as < ô > [o], in English as < not > [ɒ], in German as < o > [ɔ~oː], in Russian as < о > [o~ɔ] and in Polish as < o > [ɔ]. Hence [ɔ] is a 100% legitimate realisation of /o/. Basically, any mid back rounded vowel will do.

If we look at < e >, we find: French < é > [e], English < make > [eɪ], German < e > [ɛ~eː], Russian < э > [ɛ], Polish < e > [ɛ]. And lo and behold: also [ɛ] is as good a realisation of /e/ as any other of the aforementioned. Any mid front unrounded vowel will do.

So, no problem at all with your vowels.

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Note: In Russian, I stuck to the stressed allophones of the vowels and omitted the unstressed and reduced ones.

Concerning your /r/:

Remembering that the Fundamento is like the tenets of Esperanto, and in the English grammar /r/ represented by < r > is defined as "r as in rare", i.e. something like [ɹ̠eə] in RP I guess, your "English" realisation should be fine, too. I suppose Zamenhof referred in "rare" to the first < r > and not to the second < r > which is just a schwah. I can't find any indication in the Fundamento that /r/ must be trilled.

For instance, I personally use two allophones of /r/ is Esperanto: [r] and [ɾ]. Obviously influenced by the fact that I am a Spanish speaker. I use [r] word-initially and in the syllable coda, and [ɾ] in the syllable onset when not word-initial (same as in Spanish). So basically I pronounce: Tri rusaj amikoj parolas Esperanton as something like [tɾi 'rusa̠i ̯ã'miko̞i ̯pa̠'ɾo̞la̠s e̞spe̞'ɾãntõn]. The (slight) nasalisation before nasals just occurrs naturally, but I don't think anybody notices. If I pronounce trills everywhere it just sounds like an angry German tourist at the hotel trying to order their breakfast in Spanish. But this is just my personal opinion.