diff --git a/spacy/tests/regression/test_issue617.py b/spacy/tests/regression/test_issue617.py
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..e8a9be699
--- /dev/null
+++ b/spacy/tests/regression/test_issue617.py
@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
+from ...vocab import Vocab
+
+
+def test_load_vocab_with_string():
+    vocab = Vocab.load('/tmp/vocab')