Complaints & connections · borters.ch
Tachyphemia
People who stutter usually know it painfully; people who clutter often do not — and speak clearly the moment they attend to it.
Also known as: cluttering · tachyphemia · rapid unclear speech · swallowed syllables · fluency disorder
Open in the tool — with search and all the links →This compilation is for information and replaces neither medical diagnosis nor treatment. If you have symptoms, see a doctor.
Cluttering is the often overlooked twin of stuttering — far less recognised, though it gets in the way just as much. Speech is too fast and above all uneven: the pace surges mid-sentence, syllables merge or vanish, a long word collapses into a short mush, sentences are started, dropped and rebuilt, with many fillers like “um” and repetitions of whole words. The listener hears a burst of words and understands half. The decisive difference from stuttering lies not in the sound but in awareness: people who stutter usually know it painfully well and dread particular words or situations. People who clutter often do not notice it and simply wonder why everyone keeps asking them to repeat — which is why many come for assessment late, often only when others complain. The simplest test is highly revealing: ask the person to speak deliberately clearly and cluttering improves immediately, whereas stuttering does not disappear that way. Cluttering often occurs alongside ADHD, and sometimes together with stuttering. Speech therapy is less about slowing down on command than about noticing one’s own speech, chunking it into smaller units and ordering thoughts before the sentence — recordings show many people for the first time what it actually sounds like. How this is worked on in speech therapy — amount, duration, limits and the signs that are urgent — is ordered by age at logopaedie.borters.ch. If it appears suddenly in an adult, together with paralysis, difficulty finding words, unsteady walking, or after a head injury, a prompt neurological assessment belongs alongside the speech therapy.
Both can also occur together. Speech therapy sorts this out — and the routes onward differ markedly.
Hearing yourself is the most effective first step — from the inside, your own speech sounds perfectly normal.
Pace on command rarely holds. Asking for clear speech works more reliably and shames less.
Short meaning units with a breath pause between. Pauses are not lost time, they make speech understandable.
Briefly decide what comes first, then start. Much of the mid-sentence rebuilding then falls away.
An agreed hand sign from family or teacher helps without exposing anyone in front of others.
Cluttering and ADHD often go together. Seeing both makes the support work considerably better.
No interrupting, one speaker at a time, allow time. Where nobody pushes, speech settles by itself.
There is no drug. What works is the opposite of what helps in stuttering: not speaking more fluently, but more slowly and more clearly — and above all perceiving one’s own speech at all, because in cluttering it sounds different from outside than from inside. That is why recording one’s own voice stands at the start of every therapy. Under attention the speech improves at once; in everyday life without attention the pattern returns — and that is exactly what is practised.
Speech rate in cluttering is often above two hundred syllables a minute, while the average is about a hundred and fifty to a hundred and eighty — and it varies strongly within a sentence. About one to two in a hundred people are affected, often together with stuttering or ADHD. Under attention the speech becomes clearer at once; that very gap between focused and casual speech is the identifying mark and at the same time the starting point of therapy.
Not uniformly fast but in bursts: the pace suddenly surges in the middle of a sentence.
Long words get compressed, endings swallowed — it sounds blurred although the sounds are mastered.
Started, abandoned, restarted; with plenty of “um” and whole words repeated.
Often the surroundings notice first — teachers, colleagues, the family.
The sharpest contrast with stuttering: there awareness is painfully high, in cluttering it is often low.
Asking for deliberately clear speech noticeably improves cluttering — stuttering does not vanish that way.
A lack causes exhaustion, problems concentrating, low mood and forgetfulness — and it is one of the few causes that can be found and put right with a single blood draw.
Low values are common with low mood. Whether correcting it lifts the mood is not settled; that it makes sense in winter at our latitudes is.
An empty store causes tiredness, lack of drive and problems concentrating long before any anaemia becomes visible. In women of childbearing age the most common single reason.
A building block of the cell coverings in the brain. The studies on mood are inconsistent; as part of a good diet it belongs there anyway.
Needed for making the messengers in the brain. It runs short with alcohol and under certain medicines — and it is always judged together with B12.
Cluttering worsens measurably under time pressure, over-tiredness and excitement — and caffeine strengthens all three. Less of it is here the only ingredient with a recognisable effect, and it works in both directions.
Clearly worthwhile and well supported when deficient — vegan, older adults, certain drugs. No energy boost without a deficiency.
Clearly worthwhile and well studied when deficient; fewer data for the wider uses. Fat-soluble — check blood levels at high doses.
Clearly effective with proven deficiency, useless without. Take only with a documented deficiency — excess is harmful.
Effects on inflammation and triglycerides established; cardiovascular prevention is mixed. Watch quality and freshness.
In pregnancy clearly established against neural-tube defects, otherwise mainly with deficiency. Can mask a B12 deficiency — watch both.
In cluttering it is about noticing one’s own pace — which is precisely the difficulty. Self-awareness exercises are part of speech therapy work.
AWMF 049-013 · S3 · 2016-09 — expired
Pathogenese, Diagnostik und Behandlung von Redeflussstörungen
checked 2026-09 · last looked for a successor 2026-09-20