What memories are lost if someone has amnesia?

Question

So how can they still speak with words that have basic meaning?

Answer 1

Prez say amnesia is different with each case. Prez say some people lose some minor parts of their memory. Prez say some people could have short term memory loss. Prez say all memory loss is bad. Prez say this when people not remember anything. Prez say no name. Prez say no birthday. Prez say no family. Prez say this nightmare. Prez say he hope genius find cure for amnesia like this. Prez say speech develops and he not really sure why speech sticks in some amnesia case. Prez hope he help. Prez better know.

Answer 2

It depends on the type of amnesia.

Retrograde amnesia refers to a deficit in recalling events that happened before the onset of amnesia

Anterograde amnesia refers to a deficit in learning subsequent to the onset of the disorder

Post-traumatic amnesia refers to a range of cognitive impairments, including memory loss, that occur following an accident. Often, memory loss will stretch back in time substantially, but will "shrink" to the point that only the events that occurred just prior to the accident cannot be recalled.

However, most research on amnesia has focused on what is known as the amnesic syndrome. The amnesic syndrome refers to a relatively pure memory deficit for the learning of new episodic information. This syndrome has a number of known causes, including alcoholism (which results in Korsakoff's syndrome), viral infection (which can result in encephalitis), oxygen deprivation (also known as anoxia), poison, and brain lesions.

Here are some links for better understanding:
http://health.howstuffworks.com/define-amnesia.htm
http://www.athealth.com/Consumer/disorders/Amnesia.html