No, new facts won’t overwrite the old ones. Long-term memory has unlimited capacity. Forgetting is simply an inability to locate a fact in the long-term memory. That’s why mnemonics are so useful while studying a language – they create a “path” that leads you to the fact. The more you study, more “paths” you create to a single fact because you also start connecting different facts together :D So actually, studying more will make you remember more!

• This reply was modified 12 years, 9 months ago by  Hatt0ri.

I’m pretty sure an “infinite capacity long-term memory” would be a bit of a physical impossibility, at least without your brain growing out of your skull. That being said, I don’t think you’d hit the “limit” even if you lived for a couple hundred of years.

@Eddie: You are right. Mnemonics (of all kinds) are like brain scaffolding. They are quick and cheap to build and they help you during the slower process of long term memory construction. The eventual goal is to see written Japanese (or hear spoken) and understand it immediately and respond; not to take it in, translate it into English in your head, formulate a response to that English (also in English), translate that back to Japanese and then respond. It takes an incredible amount of time and is actually physically tiring. But! That skill takes a long time to develop.

In terms of kanji, you eventually want to recognize a kanji and know its meaning(s) and reading(s) straight away. The method Heisig proposes that you first look at a kanji and recognize the primitives, remember their “meaning”, remember the story, remember the “meaning” of the kanji. Seems like a lot more work, just like building tons of scaffolding is a lot of work. But it makes the entire building process easier in the long run.

Adam Savage ran out of long-term memory in the twenty-seventh century or so. He invented a sort of external memory device for his brain – though, since earth’s civilization had been wiped out by that asteroid in the twenty-fourth century, he had to do it on his own, using whatever he could scrounge from a twentieth century bunker. It worked, too – as we all know, he’s currently the human race’s first thousand-year-old man. =)

Isn’t it fun what you learn on the Discovery Channel?

^Reminds me of Rob Lowe’s character in Parks & Recreation. I also wondered if my brain would get ‘full’ and not be able to hold anything anymore.

Ahh Parks and Rec… tonight I shall see you again…

As for running out of memory… search for eidetic memory. Don’t worry, your memory blocks have plenty of space– your ‘lack of memory’ is either a conditioned mental block or actual brain damage. When I was around three years old I would remember entire movie dialogues after watching just once which scared me quite a bit later on when a teacher said Einstein died “of a brain explosion”. Oi.

This is my advice to everyone however: stop worrying about memorizing things. Next time you study, don’t get finicky if you don’t recall something you just did or something you did a while. Stop, steady your breathing, close your eyes, whatever, and really concentrate. It doesn’t matter how long it takes, but things stay in your memory naturally. Accessing that memory easily is something that most people have to (re)train themselves how to do.