A system (87) for generating high quality speech uses coarticulated speech segment data extracted from spoken carrier syllables and digitally compressed for storage using adaptive differential pulse code modulation (ADPCM). The system includes a programmed digital microprocessor (89) with an associated read only memory (91) containing the compressed coarticulated speech segment library, random access memory (93) containing system variables and the sequence of coarticulated speech segments required to generate a desired spoken message, and text to speech chip (95) which provides the sequence of coarticulated speech segments to the RAM (93). The microprocessor (89) operates in accordance with a program stored in ROM (91) to recover the compressed coarticulated speech segment data stored in ROM (91) in a sequence called for by the text to speech chip (95), to reconstruct or ''blow back'' the stored ADPCM data to PCM data, and to concatenate the PCM data into waveforms to produce a real time digital speech waveform. The digital speech waveform is converted to an analog signal via digital to analog converter (97), amplified in amplifier (99) and applied to an audio speaker (101) which generates a high quality spoken message. In the preferred embodiment of the invention, the coarticulated speech segments are diphones.