# What is the difference between Snowball & Stemming?

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/what-is-the-difference-between-snowball-stemming/9481>\
**Category:** Elasticsearch\
**Created:** [October 26, 2012, 2:17pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/what-is-the-difference-between-snowball-stemming/9481 "2012-10-26T14:17:04Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Eric\_GeLo](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/eric_gelo/32/2661_2.png) [@Eric\_GeLo](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Eric_GeLo)\
**Post date:** [October 26, 2012, 2:17pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/what-is-the-difference-between-snowball-stemming/9481/1 "2012-10-26T14:17:04Z")

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Hey!

I'm implementing a search process using ElasticSearch which currently use  
the snowball token filter (French). I have take a look to the Stemmer token  
filter which seems to do the same. Someone can explain what is the  
difference between the stemmer token filter & the snowball token filter and  
so, what is the difference between these stemmer configurations: french,  
light\_french, minimal\_french?

Thanks for your time!

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**Author:** ![jprante](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/jprante/32/44941_2.png) [@jprante](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/jprante)\
**Post date:** [October 26, 2012, 11:53pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/what-is-the-difference-between-snowball-stemming/9481/2 "2012-10-26T23:53:11Z")

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Hi Eric,

there are three french stemmers available in Lucene:

- the default french stemmer, based on Martin Porter's Snowball algorithm  
[Snowball: A language for stemming algorithms](http://snowball.tartarus.org/texts/introduction.html) which is purely  
algorithmic (no use of a dictionary), see  
also [http://www.lirmm.fr/~mroche/Recherche/Articles/Porter/porter.pdf](http://www.lirmm.fr/~mroche/Recherche/Articles/Porter/porter.pdf)

Rule of thumb: use the Porter stemmer if you want to stem as many words as  
possible and tolerate stemming errors (wrong stemming, "overstemming")

- the minimal stemmer, based on Jaqcues Savoy's 1999 algorithm "A STEMMING  
PROCEDURE AND STOPWORD LIST FOR GENERAL FRENCH CORPORA"  
[http://members.unine.ch/jacques.savoy/papers/frjasis.pdf](http://members.unine.ch/jacques.savoy/papers/frjasis.pdf)

Rule of thumb: use this stemmer if you want a specifically designed stemmer  
for french with the help of a stopword list

- the light stemmer, a statistical approach of stemming applicable for  
several languages, based on the algorithm of Jacques Savoy "Light Stemming  
Approaches for the French, Portuguese,  
German and Hungarian Languages"  
[Attention - RERO DOC](http://doc.rero.ch/lm.php?url=1000,43,4,20091216091830-OY/Savoy_Jacques_-_Light_Stemming_Approaches_fo_the_French_20091216.pdf)

Rule of thumb: use this stemmer if you prefer statistical methods that  
should keep good retrieval quality with even less stemmed words

Cheers, Jörg

On Friday, October 26, 2012 4:17:04 PM UTC+2, Eric GeLo wrote:

> Hey!
> 
> I'm implementing a search process using Elasticsearch which currently use  
> the snowball token filter (French). I have take a look to the Stemmer token  
> filter which seems to do the same. Someone can explain what is the  
> difference between the stemmer token filter & the snowball token filter and  
> so, what is the difference between these stemmer configurations: french,  
> light\_french, minimal\_french?
> 
> Thanks for your time!

--

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**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\
**Post date:** [July 6, 2017, 3:07am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/what-is-the-difference-between-snowball-stemming/9481/3 "2017-07-06T03:07:02Z")

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