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A few plausible answers to that:

In general, it's not transliteration into English characters, it's transliteration into the Latin alphabet. That means that transliteration tends to be shared across the various European languages that use the Latin alphabet. And given that the English were one of the last powers to actually engage in the naval trade war, they're less likely to be the basis of a major transliteration effort.

In the case of the q and x, I believe it comes from 500-year old Portuguese.



> That means that transliteration tends to be shared across the various European languages that use the Latin alphabet

Not just European languages. Pinyin is useful for everyone that has to interact with Chinese words, whether their first language is English, French, Swahili, or even Mandarin.

A lot of people might not realize that the primary users of Pinyin are Chinese people. The way typing Chinese works is that you type the pronunciation in Pinyin and then a box pops up with choices of characters from which you select the correct one. It's also used in dictionaries to give the pronunciation of unfamiliar characters.




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