As much as I would love to pretend its British English this site aims to use, American English via MTV and Hollywood have made an impact and the phonetics in examples follow this.

Some of us find the spelling of Gongyo from The Liturgy of Nichiren Buddhism has little bearing on how its actually said,when compared to the CD (or videos) of Gongyo, assuming you are speaking English, it is different again if you are perhaps Italian as the phonetics here assume English. It is best to learn it from the CD, MP3 or here (as tho you were learning a song) as it is the same as used in districts across UK,Europe and the USA.

Learning Gongyo is a further challenge as you are making additional translations, from the phonetic of what is actually written, to what should be said instead, and by the time you have done that you have lost your place when chanting with others - this can be very frustrating and a hindrance to your practice. As with many people, you get your pencil out and alter your copy of The Liturgy of Nichiren Buddhism, changing 'I' to 'E', 'U' to 'O' to give you a fighting chance. Many people just memorize Gongyo from the CD (listening to it on your commute to work for example), as the CD is a common gold standard, best to copy their pronunciation. Those that have learnt it from a book could be at odds with everyone else, the word with the highest variations is 'Nange'(associated with 'hard to understand' or 'difficulty' oddly enough), this can also trip you up, so when you are chanting, especially those people with 'Cafe Deafness', the trip happens when you hear someone saying a word differently to how you say it, and for a moment you question was the 'mistake' yours or theirs and in that moment you have lost your place. So its worth learning 'Resynchronization points' to allow you to quickly find your place.

In The Liturgy of Nichiren Buddhism they will tell you there is one beat per Chinese character with the exception of 'shari-hotsu' and 'hara-mitsu', so when chanting, with one hand pretend you are beating a drum to maintain the rhythm, this will help you when you have a tricky patch, such as the 'Ho-itsu jaku go-yoku da o akuu-do chu' section.

Inconsistencies

There is a section that is repeated 3 times. What you see is:

Sho-i shoho. Nyo ze so. Nyo ze sho. Nyo ze tai. Nyo ze riki. Nyo ze sa. Nyo ze in. Nyo ze en. Nyo ze ka. Nyo ze ho. Nyo ze honmar kukyo to

Which is pronounced as:
Shoe E show ho nyo zay. So nyo zay. Show nyo zay. Tie nyo zay. Riki nyo zay. Sa nyo zay. In nyo zay. En nyo zay. Ka nyo zay. Hoe nyo zay hon mar ku kyo toe.

• The o in Dō is said as Doh, and "To dan ryo yo jin" is pronounced "Toe dan rio yo gin", and Hōben is pronounced Hoe Ben.
• 'I' but is pronounced 'Ee' and "shi" is pronounced "she".
• 'U' is pronounced 'Oo' so "U man da ra ke" becomes "O man-da-ra-ke" and Gyū is pronounced gYo. and 'Shuju fun-betsu' becomes 'shoe joe foon bet sue'
• Jō as in 'Ju Jo' is pronounced Joe
• Jū as in 'Ju Jo' is pronounced Jew
• Shō as in 'shojin' is pronounced Show
• Shu as in 'shoju' is pronounced Shoe
• Nyo is pronounced N'Yo
• So is pronounced Sow