A speech encoding system for encoding a digitized speech signal into a standard digital format, such as MIDI. The MIDI speech encoding system includes a memory storing a dictionary comprising a digitized pattern and a corresponding segment ID for each of a plurality of speech segments (i.e., phonemes). A speech analyzer identifies each of the segments in the digitized speech signal based on the dictionary. One or more prosodic parameter detectors measure values of the prosodic parameters of each received digitized speech segment. A MIDI speech encoder converts the segment IDs and the corresponding measured prosodic parameter values into a MIDI speech signal. A MIDI speech decoding system includes a MIDI data decoder and a speech synthesizer for converting the MIDI speech signal to a digitized speech signal.