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SilasBarta comments on Being a teacher - Less Wrong
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We do?
Like Yvain, I once taught French as a second language, and don't remember that. I did have a lot of cases of "there's probably a rule but I don't know how to spell it out".
In a way -- I'm referring to how a lot of the forms sound the same but have to be written differently -- e.g. parle vs. parles.
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.
Verb forms' frequently being homophones is really not the same thing as their not being conjugated when spoken.
If all verb forms were homophones then it would be exactly the same thing. French still hasn't gone so far.