Who says German e is supposed to sound like an English a? The a in "Nate" is completely different from the German "e". There are actually three forms of the German e: the short one (which is closed), the long one (which is open), and the final one (called "schwa" in English). "Net" or "get" is a good English representation of the short German e. The final e (e.g. "habe") sounds a bit like a very short English a (and not like the long diphtong a in Nate), but not quite. Maybe that's where the confusion comes from?

Dear Pudge You are right. One of the forums to pronounce the letter "e" in German is like an "a". However, this "a" is weaker than a normal "a" like in the verb machen. I think we could say that this e is a mix of a and a, with a strong influence of e. For exemple: the word Brille (glasses). We pronounce this word with this kind of mix. But the influence of e is really present in the pronunciation. But this mixed form is not the only form to pronounce e in German. In words like gehen and sehen, the h is not pronounciated and the e is longer. It sounds like geen ( but not with the ee of the English. We could say that you have to pronounciate the first e as there were two of them in the word. Some words have also an "e" that sounds like the e in set. I think that this happens when we have a single e between two consonants. I think that the mixed form of e that I have mentionated above only appears in the end of a word.