pronunciation - Why is "me" pronounced like "me" but "ne" is not pronounced with the same e sound?

Why is "me" pronounced like "me" but "ne" is not pronounced with the same e sound?

According to a professor, "ne" is pronounced like "nuh". Why is it like this?

And more generally, does there exist a rule set on how to pronounce things so I don't have to ask a question like this again, or is it all word dependent and of unknown origin like idioms?

Answer

I would pronounce "ne" (all by itself) as close to "neh". It's also "neh" in "necessary", "negligent", "Nellie", "nepotism", "nest", "nettle", "never", "nexus", -- but "new" is closer to "neew".

As the others have pointed out, English spelling is more like a suggestion about pronunciation. I think this is because we've borrowed from so many other languages - French, German, Italian, Russian, British English .....

One of the most famous examples is "through", "tough", "cough", "though", "rough", "thought", "bough". That's an extreme case - but I don't think it's anywhere nearly as complex as tonal languages like Chinese.