I think they say to add "y" because "y" is always soft in English (like is in Russian, but not in some other languages), and consonants which follow each other usually (if no special effort made) both soft or both hard (the first consonant gets softened by the second one). The other always-soft English sound is "ch", it is also always soft in Russian.

There are English words that transliterated to Russian with soft consonants. Although I cannot comment how are they close to Russian pronunciation, I recommend to take a look at the them.

girl is always transliterated as гёл or гёрл, here the British speaker says "гёл" while the American says "горл" http://lingvopro.abbyyonline.com/ru/...ate/en-ru/girl

meeting is tranliterated митинг and this pronounciation of both British and American speakers confirms that the first m is soft here in English.

In the word "please" here the British speaker pronounces soft "l", "плиз" while the ameriсan speaker says "плыз" as I hear it.

business is transliterated бизнес (pronounced with soft б) and this is confirmed by both British and American speakers

In the case of "limit" the British speaker says "лимит" (both "l" and "m" soft, very close to Russian, only the "t" somewhat different) while the American one says "лымэт" here