 Pittsburgh’s dialect has its own rhythms and words. I still remember some of them. Rubber bands were gum bands. Soft drinks were pop. Soda was pop with ice cream, and tennis shoes were any kind of Keds or Converse sneakers.
Yinzers also have their own way of pronouncing words. My brother Howard’s name was pronounced, “Haired” with a nasal emphasis. Everyone knew my brother as Chooch after the Mets catchers Choo-Choo Coleman. I hadn’t realized till writing this paragraph that he might have encouraged the nickname, because a nasally spoken “Haird” is an unpleasant sound. I still suffer linguistic deficiencies from being born in the Burgh by not being able to pronounce the difference between full and fool or pool and pull. As you can imagine, people hearing fool when you meant full can have interesting consequences. When my family moved to Connecticut when I was twelve, I ordered a strawberry soda expecting a delectable ice cream soda. A glass of strawberry pop was delivered to my table. That was the first time I realized that finding belonging in a new community might be more difficult than I imagined. It was also quite a challenge to find hoagies in the grinder sandwich shops. As someone who values routine, these simple things rocked my world. But I did grow to love grinders and now have no problem calling Sprite Zero a soda. There is a reason I opened this piece talking about food. It was often really hard for me to order at restaurants for much of my life because I stuttered. Ordering food or being asked a question in class can make me feel in the spotlight that I wasn’t prepared for. When put in those situations, my stuttering genes were activated- words would not come out of my mouth. My heart sunk as I could see the impatience of the server or the teacher. I felt the weight of a thousand eyes looking at me wondering what the heck was wrong with me. It felt like hours sometimes before I could get any word out. Sometimes others would grow so frustrated they would just shut me off and replace my word with what they thought I was trying to say, which was often wrong. The harder I tried, the less likely it was for a word to be vocalized. Once the word came out, I experienced a sense of relief like a patient who just had their ventilator removed. I also had to shrug off embarrassment and shame of not being able to order a Coke. I have some memories of how much that stung. But stuttering happened daily, and my brain became tolerant of linguistic torture. I think one of the advantages of being autistic is having no clue of how anything I do, including stuttering, might affect other people. Also, although I am very insecure about people liking me or recognizing me as a talented professional, I tend not to care what they think of personal characteristics like how I dress, a huge stain on my shirt, what my hair looks like, and I probably worry less than a more neurotypical person might worry if they stutter I still occasionally stutter these days, but I rarely notice it. I was never really treated for it. I guess I just grew out of it. Yet, sometimes, when I least expect it, the server will ask for my order and I experience my vocal cords freezing up as I try to order a hamburger. For some reason I never stutter when giving a presentation or when teaching a class. I have no idea why. Some might say I am just masking then, but I don’t feel that way. In any case, I can happily report that although stuttering was not great for my self confidence, it did not seem to hinder my career at all. My autism diagnosis made me wonder whether twirling my hair and pulling it out, banging my head to go to sleep, or endless tickling my nose and stuttering, and deficiencies in social interactions were cognitively related to each other through autism. One might think that a link between autism and stuttering would have been extensively studied since both can affect the well-being of children. I assumed that other kids with autism would be like me, so that they would also stutter. So, I turned to Google Scholar to look for a scientific review paper on the subject, or at least a couple of primary scientific studies. The first paper I found was from Kristen Rollins, Natalie Pak, Michelle Hite, and Nathan Maxfield published in October 2025 in the International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders1. Let me remind you that the paper was published in 2025. I mean 2025 and just last month!! So, imagine my dumbfounded surprise when I read the first sentence, “It is documented that children who stutter, as well as children with autism, may experience diminished well-being relative to children without these conditions. In contrast, almost nothing is documented about well-being of children living with both conditions, most likely because such children are relatively rare and thus challenging to study as a group.” Read that again “almost nothing is documented.” The paper used survey data and found that children with autism and stuttering reported more difficulty in six characteristics of wellbeing- related to emotional symptoms, peer relationships, hyperactive behavior, and overall conduct than children who only have autism and those that only stutter. Another paper in July 2025 by Hannah Polikowski et al in Nature Genomics2 examined genomic relationships. They found specific gene loci that validated the heritability of stuttering. They also showed a genetic link of stuttering with autism, depression, and impaired musical rhythm. I have three of the four—I do pretty well with music, but watching my father try to keep a beat was like a great Saturday Night Live skit. My dad didn’t stutter though he was likely neurodiverse. I found again that Google AI seems to be way ahead of actual research. Citing a web page from “Golden Care Therapy,” it answered the question “are stuttering and autism related?” with great confidence. The AI overview that came up read “Yes, stuttering is linked to autism, with studies showing that stuttering may be more common in autistic individuals than in the general population. This connection is supported by evidence of shared genetic factors, increased rates of stuttering in autistic people, and the co-occurrence of speech disfluencies in both conditions. The link may be due to a variety of factors, including speech and language processing difficulties, anxiety, and genetic influences.” The overview goes on to make many seemingly certain statements, including information for the genomics study I mentioned above, but citing its conclusions with more certainty than the authors did. Google AI also indicated that around 4% of people with autism also stutter, while those without autism have a stuttering rate of 1%, which seems counter to the paper I cited above and did not have a reference. Google AI, however, did make me feel like my question wasn’t stupid since its answer was very consistent with what I thought the relationship might be. Yet, I must give Google AI another F grade in my class since it relied on a website that did not cite primary scientific literature for its conclusions. I am sensing that there is a problem with communication about autism. Science seems to be communicated on websites or AI to the public with much more certainty than the research actually demonstrates on Google, on web sites, and in posts I see in social media. So, here is a plea to those of you who write about autism. Please do me a favor- if you write on Substack or create websites and you make strong statements about links between autism and anything, please cite at least a few peer reviewed papers from the primary scientific literature for folks like me so we can get to the primary source. I am kind of anal that way. Sorry for going off track. Let’s get back to stuttering. I often think back to growing up. My typical autistic traits seem to be a part of me just like stuttering or my passion for the Pittsburgh Steelers. I can see now that all those traits have advantages and disadvantages. I may stutter in your presence. So, if you ask me a question, and you feel frustrated that I can’t get any words out, please resist the urge to stick your hands down my mouth and try pull the words out. The words always come even if it takes a few years. REFERENCES 1Rollins KN, Pak NS, Hite M, Maxfield ND. 2025. Well-Being of Children with Stuttering and Autism: A First Glance. International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders 60: e70146 https://doi.org/10.1111/1460-6984.70146 2Polikowsky HG, Scartozzi AC, Shaw DM, Pruett DG, Chen H-H, Petty LE, Petty AS, Lowther EJ, Cho S-H, You Y, 23 and me Research Team, Mozaffari S, Avery CL, Harris KM, Gordon RL, Beilby JM, Viljoen KZ, Jones RM, Huff CD, Highland HM, Kraft SJ, Below JE. 2025. Large-scale genome-wide analyses of stuttering. Nature Genetics. 57: 1835-1847. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41588-025-02267-2
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