Quote Originally Posted by zedeeyen View Post
It does make the sound closer though. It doesn't make it correct, but it is closer. Ask any English speaker to say "nyet" and what you hear will be a lot closer to "нет" than if you'd asked him to say "net". You can stamp your feet and insist that it's wrong all you like, but for most people it's good enough to be going on with, until such times as they've heard how the locals pronounce it.




It is as close to the real Russian pronunciation as Russian хё(р) to English "her". (That's how this and many other words are pronounced by Russians).
There are no examples, or vanishingly few, where a slight mispronunciation of the softness of a consonant in an otherwise correct sentence can lead to ambiguity or confusion.
The key word here is "slight". What you suggest is not a slight but a total mispronunciation of Russian soft consonants.