Oh, that, yes—I ascribe that more to the fact that written French just has a lot of letters you don’t pronounce, or only pronounce in certain contexts, especially at the end of words (or h at the beginning).
But those letters still exist, even in spoken french: the verbs in “tu vois” and “il voit” sound the same (“vwa”) in isolation, but with “arriver” behind them, they can sound like “tu vwazarriver” and “il vwatarriver”.
Not to mention the fact that only some of the forms are homophones anyway: parle/parles/parlent sound the same, but they’re different from parlons and parlez.
Probably not, even the vois/voit example is far-fetched, most people would pronounce both “vwa’arriver”, except maybe in a context where they want to put extra emphasis.
Oh, that, yes—I ascribe that more to the fact that written French just has a lot of letters you don’t pronounce, or only pronounce in certain contexts, especially at the end of words (or h at the beginning).
But those letters still exist, even in spoken french: the verbs in “tu vois” and “il voit” sound the same (“vwa”) in isolation, but with “arriver” behind them, they can sound like “tu vwazarriver” and “il vwatarriver”.
Not to mention the fact that only some of the forms are homophones anyway: parle/parles/parlent sound the same, but they’re different from parlons and parlez.
Is there some context where you can distinguish ait from aient in the spoken language?
Probably not, even the vois/voit example is far-fetched, most people would pronounce both “vwa’arriver”, except maybe in a context where they want to put extra emphasis.