Memory Loss and Language Acquisition

[evalangui]

I wondered if anybody has experienced something like this: My sister, who's currently 17, has been living in England for a year, immersing herself in English with very little contact with her native Spanish outside the home/skyping/the odd friend. She's now doing As Levels (advanced secondary school for non UKers), which are pretty challenging for native speakers, and although she's doing decently, she's experiencing what she describes as memory loss. She's just now complaining because she wrote the beginning of a piece of homework two days ago and now cannot remember having written it at all (when normally she'd experience 'flashbacks', my experience of reading my own writing as well). My best guess is that this is somehow related to the amount of information, including vocab, that she's cramming into her brain. Her best guess is that she's got early onset Alzheimer.

Would anybody care to speculate? Share similar experiences?