How to Pronounce maintenant

In Lesson 7.1, in the lesson's Interactive Audio, at 19:41 minutes, Paul states that the French word for "now"  is "maintenant" and then asks, "Where is it snowing now?"  Claire answers, "Où neige-t-il maintenant?"  When I heard Paul, I questioned my memory of maintenant's pronuciation; he pronounced the first "a" in maintenant very close to the English long-A sound.  Claire, responsed by pronouncing the first "a" very close to the English short-A sound.

I searched the website for "maintenant" and found it used many times in RF's Levels 1, 2, and 3.  The several speakers spoke with a variety of accents, but they all pronounced maintenant with the short-A sound as Claire did in Lesson 7.1.

Can maintenant's first "a" be pronounced with either the the English short-A or the long-A sound, or was Paul's pronounciation a slip-of-the-tongue.

Hi Diana, I listened a bit to the extract that you're referring to and this is probably a harsh thing to say about Paul, but his Anglophone accent is really quite thick when speaking French and I wouldn't try to emulate his pronunciation at all if you're working on developing a neutral French accent. Honestly, that was a lazy pronunciation of «maintenant» by a non-native French speaker.

I think his accent is fine though if you're just working on understanding and being understood, but it's definitely obvious to Francophones that he has a kind of British-derivative native tongue.

I noticed that a few seconds earlier, he also pronounces «période» quite Anglicized...more as "peer-ee-ood" instead of "pehr-ee-ohd" (as Claire subsequently does).