# Difference between snowball stemmer and regular stemmer

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/difference-between-snowball-stemmer-and-regular-stemmer/265346>\
**Category:** Elasticsearch\
**Created:** [February 24, 2021, 1:35pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/difference-between-snowball-stemmer-and-regular-stemmer/265346 "2021-02-24T13:35:28Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![tomsquest](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/tomsquest/32/55622_2.png) [@tomsquest](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/tomsquest)\
**Post date:** [February 24, 2021, 1:35pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/difference-between-snowball-stemmer-and-regular-stemmer/265346/1 "2021-02-24T13:35:28Z")

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Hi,

Elasticsearch (and Lucene ?) has two stemmer token filters: the snowball one and the regular one.

It seems in my tests that the regular stemmer is under the hood the snowball stemmer.

**It this really the case ?**

For instance, these two settings give the same stemming in my tests:

```
    { "type": "stemmer", "language": "italian" }
    { "type": "snowball", "language": "italian" }

```

For example, as per the doc, the `type:stemmer` with language `italian` seems to be a snowball stemmer as the link goes to [snowballstem.org](http://snowballstem.org).

 ![image](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/b/3/b3dae833a914ff836aea30a9fe93c90e81dc53f0.png)

So question: are the snowball and the regular stemmer **the same** for some language config ?  
I have the case with italian and french (as in the screenshot).

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\
**Post date:** [March 24, 2021, 1:36pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/difference-between-snowball-stemmer-and-regular-stemmer/265346/2 "2021-03-24T13:36:20Z")

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