Can Chinese words be represented in letters to help me learn them?
Yes. How to represent Chinese words in Western alphabet has been a question that even the earliest Western scholars of China, including the Jesuits in the 16th century, wrestled with. A system called Wade-Giles was largely used beginning in 1892 up until the 1980s, when mainland China developed the pinyin system, which is now an unofficial yet international norm. More on the Wade-Giles and pinyin romanization systems may be learned here.
