nü

[pne]

I wonder why the German syllable "nü" /ny/ is officially(?) transcribed into Chinese characters as 尼 ní when Chinese has a perfectly serviceable syllable pronounced /ny/. (They do have 呂 for /ly/ in that table, so it's not as if they don't know about /y/....)

The transcription table for French has the same odd treatment for /ny/ vis-à-vis /ly/.

Comments

[tungol.livejournal.com]

Is there something about the semantics of the character for /ny/ that would make it unattractive as a part of transliterated words ?

[pne.livejournal.com]

The only character I know off the top of my head that is read /ny/ is 女 "woman", and looking at zhongwen.com that appears to be the only character with that pronunciation.

Whether or not the semantics of that character make it unattractive for use in transcription, I don't know.