The Egyptians had one of the earliest writing systems, and one of the most complex.

They didn't have an alphabet like we do. They had a language made up of symbols, which were either ideograms(idea-symbols) or phonograms(sound-symbols). The Egyptians didn't write vowels, so it's impossible to know how their words would have been pronounced.

Take the word nfr for example:



All we know is that the letters n, f, and r are in the transliteration. It could have been pronounced nefar, nefer, naufar, etc. etc. Most of the time, when there is a word like this, an e is just inserted between consonants to make the word pronouncable and more usable for Egyptologists.

They had one, two, and three consonant signs. Most of the time, the signs were used as phonograms - they didn't literally depict what the word was. A goose could mean a goose, or be a part of the word for son. If a sign was depicting what it was a picture of, it would have a line under it, such as the glyph for mouth, here:



Thanks to http://hieroglyphs.net for the images. It's a great source for looking up transliterations and glyphs.

Other hieroglyph resources:

http://greatscott.com/hiero/

http://www.fnspo.cz/mmm/egypt/hiero/1.htm

http://www.touregypt.net/historicalessays/hyrotutor/

And a book I cannot recommend enough, if you want to learn the basics of hieroglyphs and tomb readings:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0520215974/104-3280294-9341556

It's fairly inexpensive as well. For the more serious students who have a bit more to spend, after they've read that, I suggest:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0521774837/qid=1107737817/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/104-3280294-9341556?v=glance&s=books