Since the wave form of speech is apparently continuous and the phonemic entity is discrete, it is reasonable to expect that during the developmental stages of speech compression systems the process will gradually evolve from continuous to mixed discrete‐continuous and finally to a completely discrete type. Two plans for such systems are discussed. Plan I is an attempt to use two discrete features of speech together with continuous extractions of the formants, moments, and pitch of speech. Plan II is an attempt to identify phoneme‐like elements through a scheme of successive selection.