If NATO told liberals to jump, they'd say "fuck off authoritarian redfash tankie".
But there's somebody you forgot to ask, and it's Ukraine.
So NATO says to Zelensky "tell our idiots to jump or you won't get the new F-16". Zelensky does the song and dance and tells liberals to jump, and liberals say how high.
Your suggestion to listen to google pronounce those two different conjugations actually helped more than all of the lengthy explanations i've read so far.
It's still a bit confusing because i thought that the function of that sign was just to soften the consonant or vowel immediately before (or also after? i'm not entirely clear on this yet because i've seen frequent use of the "ы" combination), but it seems that it actually has effects throughout the entire word.
For instance, two things i noticed, and i don't know how correct google's pronunciation is but that's the only one i have to go by right now:
Firstly it seems that by adding this sign it also changes the pronunciation of the "о" earlier in the word from an "o" to more of an "a" sound. Secondly it appears that not only the stress shifts from the first syllable to the second, additionally the "и" just before the "т" at the end also becomes slightly softer. Is this correct and is this a usual thing to happen? If so then i suppose there are some words that you just have to learn how to pronounce by hearing them a few times. Still miles better than English though which is a non-phonetic spelling nightmare.
There's three different letters that shouldn't be mixed between each other: ъ, ы, ь.
ь is soft sign. It softens the consonant it's after and only affects the previous letter. It doesn't affects the pronouncation of any other letter or move stress in the word.
ъ is hard sign. It also always goes after consonant and signifies that this consonant should be separated with voice from next letter after consonant, without merging with it. Put in google translator words дело (affair) and подъезд (entrance) and check for the sounding of combination "de", it would be like "de" in the first case and like "d-e" in the second.
ы has nothing common with previous two ones. It's just a vowel which reads like "yi" or something like that. Check for ты (thou), вы (you), дым (smoke).
And great observation regarding pronouncation of "o" letter! It has nothing to do with soft sign, just Russian language allows you to read "o" which is not under stress as "a". It's not hard rule and is something like "British English accent" as historically there's Russian regions which are окающие ("o-saying", not using this type of pronouncation) and акающие ("a-saying", who speak like google voice does). So if you're muscovite, you'll say корова (cow) as karova, and if you're novgorodian you'll say korova. But that doesn't matter that much, as regardless if you say korova or karova, both muscovite and novgorodian would clearly understand what you're talking about.
That really explains a lot, thank you!