Why do we never lose certain skills we have learned, even if we haven’t practiced them for a long time. like for example riding a bicycle, and we lose some, like a new language we learned 10 years ago but can’t remember anything about it now?

Question

Why do we never lose certain skills we have learned, even if we haven’t practiced them for a long time. like for example riding a bicycle, and we lose some, like a new language we learned 10 years ago but can’t remember anything about it now?

In: 5857

Answer 1

As mentioned before, it’s very much because of muscle memory. Bicycling requires your whole body and a lot of instincts to get the hang of it, where as languages do not to the same extent.

However, I’d like to point out that after learning a language, you can pick up the pronounciation up rather quickly even after a long time, as pronounciation requires muscle memory as well.