I hadn't thought about homophones, that's a good point (and due to our quirky phonology there are many of those in French). That being said even in proper French we lose the distinction in the plural and I don't think that's really much of an issue, "le" and "la" both become "les": "les peaux" and "les pots" are pronounced exactly the same. I believe German does the same thing with plural "die".

Clearly if you told me the strictly correct sentence "les téléphones sont dans les pots" I would never wonder if you meant "the phones are in the pots" or "the phones are in the skins" because we don't generally put phones in people's skins (yet).