Since the Chinese language has no alphabet, the sounds that make up its words must be transliterated for English speakers. The Wade-Giles System of doing this was developed in 1912, by two European linguists. Their work was rather confusing, so in 1958 the People's Republic of China adopted the Pin Yin standard. In 1982, Pinyin was adopted as a world standard, and so there are many ongoing Wade-Giles to Pinyin conversion projects happening at the time of this writing.

Keeping it simple, the main syllables you need to know are in the table below.