Language development question

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I think WHY is indeed the critical situation. The best that I can recall is that I often 'had no words'. If something was said, I would have a thought but no words to attach to it. It was as if I had thoughts in one place and this pile of words in another - actually a rather large pile of words. But sorting through the words and linking them to a thought wasn't always possible. So I would shrug or something. I've gotten quite good at attaching words to thoughts, but as might be evident in some of my posts in other threads, not always very successful in communicating. My thinking, when in it's 'comfort zone' is very non-verbal. Not exactly visual either. But certainly more visual than verbal. So I expend a huge amount of energy 'translating' my thoughts into symbolic form (i.e. words).

I also have trouble with the reverse translation. If someone is speaking to me and the words don't immediately find a referent to a thought, they start queuing up and I start missing important pieces of the information stream.

Does this sound like an autistic thing?

It can be hard to really know if you had a language delay or language difficulties as a younger. My mom tells me that I was shy but just fine. Others don't agree. If there was no formal evaluation as a child, speech therapy, etc., it's hard to really know--I mean who can really remember how well they talked at 4 or 5?