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What is the capital of Tunisia?

How is /a/ pronounced before n/m in French?

The two are pronounced the same. The nasal sound might come from the double ‘n’, but that’s beyond my expertise (and the question).

Reference : french is my mother tongue.

The widespread pronunciation is [pano] with no nasalisation. You might hear [panɔ] in eastern France, but this is unrelated to your question.

A non native speaker might hear a slight kind of nasalization at the end of the vowel a due to the transition to a nasal consonant. This is probably what you experienced but native French ears cannot hear it, or at least won’t assimilate it to a nasalization.

There is an exception about this lack of nasalization but it doesn’t really apply to panneau. It is the pronunciation used by a few people, generally old, from the Occitanie region (e.g. Toulouse, Montpellier) who might still nasalize the sequence an or am before an n or a m leading to [ɑ̃n] (or better [ɑ̃n.n]) instead of the usual [an]. This used to be the standard French pronunciation before this nasalisation disappeared a few centuries ago.

For example, grammaire and grand-mère used to be pronounced identically.

— Veux-tu toute ta vie offenser la grammaire ?
— Qui parle d’offenser grand’mère ni grand’père ?

Molière, Les femmes savantes, acte II, scène 6, 1672.

And this might still be the case with some native speakers:

https://www.bfmtv.com/mediaplayer/video/grammaire-ou-grand-mere-incomprehension-lors-du-point-presse-de-castaner-950001.html

Another typical example is année sometimes pronounced [ɑ̃n.ne] instead of [ane].

With panneau, you might hear rares [panno] is southern France, but [pɑ̃n.no] is not expected.

Petite vidéo avec les deux prononciations.

https://youtu.be/OBMHxUHlcpU

 

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What is the capital of Tunisia?