A litlle. Intonation and non verbal cues help a bit with disambiguation. Also, while pinyin can have tone markers, they are a pain to type and are often omitted

A litlle. Intonation and non verbal cues help a bit with disambiguation. Also, while pinyin can have tone markers, they are a pain to type and are often omitted. It is not rare to see people who are having an oral conversation disambiguate words by drawing them with the index finger in the palm of their hand.