Children cannot learn to speak a language simply from occasional noninteractive exposure to native speakers' input (e.g., by hearing television dialogues), but can they learn something about its phonology? To answer this question, the present study varied ambient hearing experience for 126 5- to 7-year-old native Cantonese-Chinese speakers learning English as a second language and Putonghua as a second dialect. Hearing Putonghua songs as ambient sounds improved the children's Putonghua accent in a story read-aloud task, whereas hearing English songs yielded no measurable analogous benefit. Research and educational implications are discussed. (Contains 1 figure.)