Would this be considered a speech delay?

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I apparently started talking late. Age two-and-a-half doesn't particularly sound late, but I guess it was bordering on concern that I said almost nothing until that time. Then, at two-and-a-half, I my vocabulary exploded and I started talking in paragraphs. The only thing I can figure is that I spent all of my time listening, sorting stuff out in my head, and didn't really need to practice saying it out loud until I felt I was "ready."

Did anyone else have a similar development pattern with their speech?

Did you coo as an infant, babble as a one year old and use simple, one word sentences?

By your description of talking by two and a half year old, it sounds pretty "normal." People tend to forget that kids have their own time table and will
do things when they are truly ready. The age "reference" simply serves as a guideline.

The only real difference between Asperger Syndrome and High Functioning Autism is a 'clinically significant delay in language' - Personally, I don't know where the line of significance would be drawn.

But my mother has told pretty much the same story as yours - I said nothing for so long they were about to start worrying whether there was a problem, then lo and behold, I started speaking in complex sentences right out of the blue.

I do think (though I certainly don't remember), that it comes from the fact that we don't process social interaction with the dexterity of most, so we listen and wait, until the meaning of all those social noises becomes clear. Whereas a neurotypical infant jumps into the interaction gurgling and cooing, attempting to mimic the sounds made by those around him/her long before they are physically capable of reproducing any actual words.

Maybe that's the origin of this damned internal monologue that keeps me awake at night. I've been talking to myself inside my head since before I ever tried to talk to anyone else.

AS criteria say it clearly:

single words by age 2 (meaning 24 months) and communicative phrases by age 3 (36 months)

If you didn't say single words before age 2 you cannot receive the diagnosis. (Edit: because that's a speech delay)

If you said single words before the age of 2 but no communicative language before age 3 you also cannot receive the diagnosis. (Edit: and that's counting as a delay of speech too)

There's no number of words required to have been said until age 2 and no number of communicative phrases to have been used until age 3.

Loss of language even if normal speech development was before that would also put someone into the classical autism category as loss of language skills is mentioned there.

I'm so confused as to why we believe in this diagnosis process so much. I went to a support group for AS/autism and the head of the group was HFA and he was able to talk to many members of the group, hold a job and organize the meetings. Whereas, the people who had AS were for the most part as functioning or less functioning than him. They are just classifications that truly don't mean anything. I just feel like the earliest talker could likely have more problems in daily life, than someone who didn't talk until they were 4...Am I wrong?

Classifications do mean something: a diagnosis! And a diagnosis means services (at best)

I suppose that if AS and HFA/LFA weren't separated in some artificial way, there'd be lost of autistic people who'd like that, but also lots of autistic people with AS who would hate to be associated with those with classical autism.

And then there's also be the huge problem with services of government and insurances who'd try hard to deny them to a person who needs them just because people with the same diagnosis don't need them. If half the people claimed they don't want and don't need a certain treatment, then government and insurances would try to save money and deny this treatment to everybody with the same diagnosis too.