diff --git a/spacy/lemmatizer.py b/spacy/lemmatizer.py
index 3eb7d1a52..08e511f68 100644
--- a/spacy/lemmatizer.py
+++ b/spacy/lemmatizer.py
@@ -19,10 +19,7 @@ class Lemmatizer(object):
             index[pos] = read_index(path.join(data_dir, 'wordnet', 'index.%s' % pos))
             exc[pos] = read_exc(path.join(data_dir, 'wordnet', '%s.exc' % pos))
         if path.exists(path.join(data_dir, 'vocab', 'lemma_rules.json')):
-            if sys.version_info[0] == 3:
-                rules = json.load(open(path.join(data_dir, 'vocab', 'lemma_rules.json'), encoding="utf_8"))
-            else:
-                rules = json.load(open(path.join(data_dir, 'vocab', 'lemma_rules.json')))
+            rules = json.load(codecs.open(path.join(data_dir, 'vocab', 'lemma_rules.json'), encoding='utf_8'))
         else:
             rules = {}
         return cls(index, exc, rules)