does anyone know anything about "speech delays"?

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I've recently started seeing a psychologist who is fairly sure I have Asperger's (I currently have a diagnosis of "Moderately Severe ADHD" and I'm not sure what she thinks of that). She helped me to set up a neuropsychological assessment to confirm or deny her impression of my symptoms as being related to Asperger's, and to get a better picture of my cognitive strengths and weaknesses.

My assessment is in a couple of weeks and I can't stop thinking about whether or not I have Asperger's or autism or neither. I know I won't know until the assessment is done, but I still find myself going over my life and trying to find out about what I was like when I was little. I'm trying to prepare myself for all possibilities, even thought I know that since I can't evaluate myself, it's not realistic to think I can anticipate all possible outcomes. (I don't like it when things happen that I'm not prepared for/hadn't anticipated....I sometimes freak out or shut down because I don't know what to do or can't make sense of a situation fast enough to stop my brain from overloading.)

One of the things I'm curious about is whether or not I had some sort of speech delay (or, conversely, a bizarre pattern of precocious language development that starts out with talking slightly later than normal--I describe this in the next paragraph). I know that only a professional can determine that for sure, but for the sake of preparing myself I'm wondering if anybody has any knowledge to share about what consititutes a speech delay and guesses about whether or not I might have had one based on what they know. I'm also wondering if anybody else on here developed speech the way I did, because I can't find a description of the way I acquired language anywhere in books and articles about language development.

My mom told me recently that she can remember me singing (well, actually, just trying to sing...I couldn't actually sing words or match a tune) whenever I heard music, and that her memories are from when I was about one and a half, but says she can't ever remember me trying to form words or talk to people at that time. Both of my parents have told me that I never used "baby talk" or "babbled," and that I went from not talking at all up to at least age two or three, to suddenly talking in complete sentences with proper pronunciation. In addition to this, I'm curious about my language because a couple of years ago it became apparent to myself and a friend of mine that I was using a variety of words in seemingly appropriate ways without really knowing what they meant (it became apparent because she asked me questions using those words and I didn't know what she was asking me--I had to ask for definitions of her terminology, and she was confused by my needing to ask).

Sorry for rambling, thanks for any responses!

This helps little, but to let you know your not alone, but my eldest daughter's speech developed in a similar manner. She's not on the spectrum, but due to pre-natal stroke, she is certainly not NT. She spoke only about a dozen one word declarations until about age four, when she suddenly asked me if a construction site we passed was going to be a hotel or a motel. Although non-verbal, I always knew she understood me, and could see that she was reading books (as opposed to mimicking behavior). Until that moment, I only had my own instinct to tell me that she understood her surroundings.

I think the criteria is something like 2 word phrases by 2. Keep in mind that a delay and impairment are different. If you didn't start talking until you were 3, then that's definately a delay. I've had reciprical conversations with kids that are 2 1/2, and I know typically kids that say words before the age of 2 but I don't know exactly the criteria. If you started at 2 and not 3, prior to 2 you may have just not had anything to say.

More importantly, I have a language impaired child who had to be actually taught language like you would learn a foreign language, and in my research a language delay can exhibit a lot of autistic like symptoms that make the child look like they are on the spectrum when they may not be. My advice is to try not to limit yourself to a label. Find out where you challenges are and address those specifically. There is a lot of overlap between "disorders".

Thanks for the replies, guys! I appreciate the info and words of support--the more info I get, the closer to satiated I become with respect to any given thing...once satiated I can let it be.