no theres no way to read it by sounding it out, however the characters have clues, the radical, which gives an idea to the meaning and sometimes the sound. basically, you gotta memorize bro.

in fact i am confused by your question, i am not understand it very clearly. what's your mean "single words"? just as David said:chinese character is made up of basic strokes. such as 一(横)丨(竖)丿(撇)丶(捺or点)乙(折) and so on; or your mean some character pronounced single,like 啊a,哦o, and so on; or what you asked is like some characters like 我wo3, 甲jia, 年nian，and so on(may you can found they are different with characters like 你ni, 他ta，奇qi ....in word structure)?

yes. but not the same. Just as ABC consists English word, a chinese character is made up of basic strokes. such as 一(横)丨(竖)丿(撇)丶(捺or点)乙(折) and so on. Every character is the mixture of basic strokes. They look like a kind of are. It is interesting and easy to learn them. You can try to remember each character just as you are remembering a picture. and try to draw them again and again till you find they look the same as those on paper or on the screen. That's all. May you find more fun in learning Chinese. Any question, email to me.Thanks for your considering.

NO. Chinese language and English language are definitely different.

yes,chinese characters are based on strokes,which includes 一(横)丨(竖)丿(撇)丶(捺or点)乙(折) and so on. ex.the character "文" is made up of 丶一 丿丶sequentially