When people first meet hieroglyphs, they often assume that every sign is a little picture standing for a whole word. It is an understandable guess, because the signs are so vividly drawn. Yet a good part of the system works in a much more familiar way. About two dozen common signs, which scholars group together as the uniliteral set, each write a single consonant sound. In that sense they behave very much like the letters you already know. It is worth saying that this is a scholarly grouping rather than an alphabet the Egyptians themselves recited, but it makes an excellent way in.
Before we meet the signs, two things are worth knowing. First, Egyptian writing did not stop at single sounds. It also used signs that stand for two or three sounds together, along with silent classifier signs that helped a reader tell one word from another. So the uniliterals are a way in rather than the whole system. Second, vowels were not written at all. To make words sayable, Egyptologists conventionally slip a short e between the consonants, which means every modern pronunciation you hear is an approximation rather than a recording of ancient speech.
With that in mind, here are six signs to start with. The first is the vulture, which writes the sound ꜣ. This is usually explained as a glottal stop, the little catch in the throat you make in the middle of uh-oh. English barely has it as a proper sound, so it can feel strange at first.
Next comes the flowering reed, which writes i. It sits close to the ee in English, or to a y. It is a gentle sound and an easy one to recognise once you have seen it a few times.
The quail chick writes w, as in water, or the oo in food. It is one of the most common signs you will meet, so it repays learning early.
The mouth sign writes r, which needs little explanation. It is a good example of how directly some of these signs map onto sounds you use every day.
The water ripple writes n. Once you know it, you will begin to spot it again and again across inscriptions.
Last comes the bread loaf, which writes t. It is a compact little sign and, like the others here, does a single steady job.
With just these six, letter-like spellings of short names become readable, because you can begin to sound them out consonant by consonant, dropping in that conventional e where you need it. That is exactly how the Spell Your Name tool on this site works, turning names into these single-sound signs. If you would like to build the set steadily, Hierolyte, the iPhone and iPad app behind this site, teaches one sign a day, starting with exactly these. From a handful of signs, real inscriptions slowly begin to open up.