> I expected that after six months of daily practice (about 20 minutes per day) I would have stored at least some characters in my long term memory.
Yeah, it doesn't work that way with SRS. If you're not actively using what you learned with your SRS (like say using Chinese on a daily basis) of course you're going to forget it! It's the same with bodybuilding: You have to constantly train your muscles and eat enough calories or they will shrink back to what they were before. It's not like you can gym, get as big as you want and then think if you stop you'll retain whatever you built :)
Yeah, it doesn't work that way with SRS. If you're not actively using what you learned with your SRS (like say using Chinese on a daily basis) of course you're going to forget it! It's the same with bodybuilding: You have to constantly train your muscles and eat enough calories or they will shrink back to what they were before. It's not like you can gym, get as big as you want and then think if you stop you'll retain whatever you built :)