Quote Originally Posted by Marcus View Post
But they will understand what they don't understand and will make a choice: whether to find other resourses which explain the most important Russsian phonological feature or not. And they won't even understand that they are wrong if the explanations are wrong. Because it is meaningless for a native Russian speaker that ля is lya ль is л. if anyway palatalization is mentioned regarding soft sign, why not say about palatalization before vowels, without this "y"? Or you suggest to call soft sign a meaningless letter?
Sorry mate, I don't even understand what you're trying to say here, and this is getting tiresome and circular anyway, so I'm going to leave it.

You originally asked "I wonder why many textbooks fail to explain that", and I tried to explain why. If you don't like my explanation then that's fine, feel free to invent your own one.