diff --git a/goose/text.py b/goose/text.py
index 4008d62b..ee4e6883 100644
--- a/goose/text.py
+++ b/goose/text.py
@@ -94,8 +94,12 @@ def __init__(self, language='en'):
         # TODO replace 'x' with class
         # to generate dynamic path for file to load
         if not language in self._cached_stop_words:
-            path = os.path.join('text', 'stopwords-%s.txt' % language)
-            self._cached_stop_words[language] = set(FileHelper.loadResourceFile(path).splitlines())
+            try:
+                path = os.path.join('text', 'stopwords-%s.txt' % language)
+                self._cached_stop_words[language] = set(FileHelper.loadResourceFile(path).splitlines())
+            except Exception:
+                path = os.path.join('text', 'stopwords-en.txt')
+                self._cached_stop_words[language] = set(FileHelper.loadResourceFile(path).splitlines())
         self.STOP_WORDS = self._cached_stop_words[language]
 
     def remove_punctuation(self, content):