why do Chinese words/names use X for the Sh- sound?

Question

why do Chinese words/names use X for the Sh- sound?

In: Other

Answer 1

Chinese has a systematic romanization standard called Pinyin to write Chinese words using Latin characters.

Of course, the Latin alphabet was invented to write Latin, not Chinese, and Chinese has some sounds that don’t have a precise equivalent in the Latin alphabet and vice-versa. So basically they took the Latin letters that Chinese doesn’t need and used them to describe sounds that other letters can’t. Chinese has two sounds that sound close to “sh”, so one of them is written “sh” and the other uses “x.”