diff --git a/Requirements.txt b/Requirements.txt
index 1673cecb..1fd1ebb8 100644
--- a/Requirements.txt
+++ b/Requirements.txt
@@ -1,4 +1,3 @@
 ply
 Jinja2==2.7.3
-chardet==2.2.1
 unidecode>=0.04.16
diff --git a/patacrep/encoding.py b/patacrep/encoding.py
index fd58fc2f..3f1512cf 100644
--- a/patacrep/encoding.py
+++ b/patacrep/encoding.py
@@ -1,7 +1,6 @@
 """Dealing with encoding problems."""
 
 import codecs
-import chardet
 import logging
 import contextlib
 
@@ -16,15 +15,31 @@ def open_read(filename, mode='r', encoding=None):
     If `encoding` is set, use it as the encoding (do not guess).
     """
     if encoding is None:
-        with open(filename, 'rb') as file:
-            fileencoding = chardet.detect(file.read())['encoding']
-    else:
-        fileencoding = encoding
+        encoding = detect_encoding(filename)
 
     with codecs.open(
         filename,
         mode=mode,
-        encoding=fileencoding,
+        encoding=encoding,
         errors='replace',
         ) as fileobject:
         yield fileobject
+
+def detect_encoding(filename):
+    """Return the most likely encoding of the file
+    """
+    encodings = ['utf-8', 'windows-1250', 'windows-1252']
+    for encoding in encodings:
+        try:
+            filehandler = codecs.open(filename, 'r', encoding=encoding)
+            filehandler.readlines()
+            filehandler.seek(0)
+        except UnicodeDecodeError:
+            pass
+        else:
+            if encoding != 'utf-8':
+                LOGGER.info('Opening `{}` with `{}` encoding'.format(filename, encoding))
+            return encoding
+        finally:
+            filehandler.close()
+    raise UnicodeError('Not suitable encoding found for {}'.format(filename))
diff --git a/setup.py b/setup.py
index 8d8717d6..e7102bb9 100755
--- a/setup.py
+++ b/setup.py
@@ -22,7 +22,7 @@ setup(
     packages=find_packages(exclude=["test*"]),
     license="GPLv2 or any later version",
     install_requires=[
-        "unidecode", "jinja2", "chardet", "ply",
+        "unidecode", "jinja2", "ply",
         ],
     setup_requires=["hgtools"],
     package_data={'patacrep': data_files},
diff --git a/test/test_compilation/syntax.tex.control b/test/test_compilation/syntax.tex.control
index 2794e2fa..6f213ef2 100644
--- a/test/test_compilation/syntax.tex.control
+++ b/test/test_compilation/syntax.tex.control
@@ -92,7 +92,7 @@ guitar,
 
 \selectlanguage{english}
 
-\beginsong{Song with Sharp in musicnote}[
+\beginsong{Song with Sharp in musicnote}[
   by={
   },
 ]