# German stemmer - looking for snowball alternative
**URL:** https://discuss.elastic.co/t/german-stemmer-looking-for-snowball-alternative/13968
**Category:** Elasticsearch
**Created:** [October 16, 2013, 12:17pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/german-stemmer-looking-for-snowball-alternative/13968 "2013-10-16T12:17:16Z")
**Posts on this page:** 6
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@ThomasL](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/ThomasL)
#### Post date: [October 16, 2013, 12:17pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/german-stemmer-looking-for-snowball-alternative/13968/1 "2013-10-16T12:17:16Z")
As we are not satisfied with the german snowball stemmer we are looking for
alternatives.
For example we miss stemming for some plural variants like: Kiwis --\> Kiwi
/ Autos --\> Auto and Nudeln --\> Nudel etc.
We found out about Lucene's
GermanLightStemmer, see
[http://lucene.apache.org/core/3\_6\_0/api/all/org/apache/lucene/analysis/de/GermanLightStemmer.html](http://lucene.apache.org/core/3_6_0/api/all/org/apache/lucene/analysis/de/GermanLightStemmer.html)
and think this might be an alternative. At least we hope for… 😉
I tried to use it in my elasticsearch settings, but without success so far.
Searching for "elasticsearch" and "GermanLightStemmer" results in too few
results either ;-/
Any hints how to use this stemmer in elasticsearch would really be
appreciated.
Also thanks in advance for infos about other alternative german stemmers
which can be used in elasticsearch and which are good at plural/singular
stemming.
Cheers,
Thomas
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### Author:  [@jprante](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/jprante)
#### Post date: [October 16, 2013, 12:41pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/german-stemmer-looking-for-snowball-alternative/13968/2 "2013-10-16T12:41:05Z")
The german light stemmer's name is 'light\_german' and documented at
[http://www.elasticsearch.org/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/analysis-stemmer-tokenfilter.html](http://www.elasticsearch.org/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/analysis-stemmer-tokenfilter.html)
Jörg
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### Author:  [@ThomasL](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/ThomasL)
#### Post date: [October 18, 2013, 2:49pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/german-stemmer-looking-for-snowball-alternative/13968/3 "2013-10-18T14:49:43Z")
:)))
Thanks, trying this soon… 🕶
Am Mittwoch, 16. Oktober 2013 14:41:05 UTC+2 schrieb Jörg Prante:
> The german light stemmer's name is 'light\_german' and documented at
> [Elasticsearch Platform — Find real-time answers at scale | Elastic](http://www.elasticsearch.org/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/analysis-stemmer-tokenfilter.html)
>
> Jörg
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### Author:  [@ThomasL](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/ThomasL)
#### Post date: [October 21, 2013, 4:21pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/german-stemmer-looking-for-snowball-alternative/13968/4 "2013-10-21T16:21:56Z")
Thanks again, Jörg.
Tested short the "german light stemmer" does not work on "Autos/Auto" or
"Nudeln/Nudel".
What's the best approach to achieve this?
Using a "stemmer override token filter" as described below:
> **[Elasticsearch Platform — Find real-time answers at scale](https://www.elastic.co)**
>
> Power insights and outcomes with the Elasticsearch Platform and AI. See into your data and find answers that matter with enterprise solutions designed to help you build, observe, and protect. Try Elasticsearch free today.
?
Thanks again for all hints!
Thomas
> Am Mittwoch, 16. Oktober 2013 14:41:05 UTC+2 schrieb Jörg Prante:
>
> > The german light stemmer's name is 'light\_german' and documented at
> > [Elasticsearch Platform — Find real-time answers at scale | Elastic](http://www.elasticsearch.org/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/analysis-stemmer-tokenfilter.html)
> >
> > Jörg
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### Author:  [@jprante](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/jprante)
#### Post date: [October 21, 2013, 9:12pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/german-stemmer-looking-for-snowball-alternative/13968/5 "2013-10-21T21:12:04Z")
The best approach is to write a baseform plugin for german that is better
than simple algorithmic stemming 🙂
Fortunately, I have started one and have just released 1.0.0 which is based
on a lexicon.
> **[jprante/elasticsearch-analysis-baseform](https://github.com/jprante/elasticsearch-analysis-baseform)**
>
> elasticsearch-analysis-baseform - Baseform lemmatization for Elasticsearch
Maybe you like to give it a try.
Jörg
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### Author:  [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)
#### Post date: [July 6, 2017, 2:11am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/german-stemmer-looking-for-snowball-alternative/13968/6 "2017-07-06T02:11:19Z")