Said the teacher "Your daughter is doing well at French and German. I wouldn't say that she is a natural linguist, but she is a natural talker who won't let a foreign language stand in her way."

The abstract preceding the article only speaks of a speech-specific origin of individual variability in "L2 phonetic mastery" which is not at all the same as "the ability to speak and master other languages". What about morphology, syntax, vocabulary use, etc.?

I must admit that according to my own casual observations, phonetic skills tend to correlate with other aspects of language mastery to a certain extent, but they are by no means interchangeable.

They seem to be concentrating on speaking the language, not on reading / writing it.

Interesting. Are there any indications that the difference in phoneme discrimation is a 'mechanical' advantage that makes hearing easier, or a 'processing' advantage inherent to the brain?

To put it another way: are people good at learning languages because they can distinguish phonemes, or can they distinguish phonemes because their brains are optimized to devote resources and attention to language?

Man, wtf? Is this haloscan thing censoring words like the vernacular for rooster?

Every time I enter C O C K it disconnects me.

sorry, i'm a prig ;-)