diff --git a/spacy/lexeme.pyx b/spacy/lexeme.pyx
index 459c9c199..b7dc701c2 100644
--- a/spacy/lexeme.pyx
+++ b/spacy/lexeme.pyx
@@ -1,4 +1,7 @@
 # cython: embedsignature=True
+# cython: infer_types=True
+
+from __future__ import unicode_literals
 from cpython.ref cimport Py_INCREF
 from cymem.cymem cimport Pool
 from murmurhash.mrmr cimport hash64