I'm reminded of how English orthography has that weird thing where the presence of a silent E can seemingly change the vowel in the previous syllable. For example the Tom Lehrer song, "who can turn a can into a cane? Silent E..."

So a hypothetical "nife" would never be mistaken for "neef", as "nif" could be.

Or mistaken for niff. [0]

(No, I didn't know this word existed before this moment.)

[0] https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/niff