From: "Thomas R. Wier"
> No, not necessarily. All children are actually born with the ability
> to distinguish all possible phones, but they lose this ability some
> several months after birth as they acclimatize to their speech
> environment. This latent ability could however be preserved in a few
> individuals who have the phonetic equivalent of perfect pitch. Indeed,
> analogously, people who speak languages which employ tonal phonemic
> contrasts essentially all have perfect pitch.
You apparently have not endured an evening in a Chinese karaoke parlor. :)
Kou