diff --git a/spacy/morphology.pyx b/spacy/morphology.pyx
index c146094a9..a9bab38ed 100644
--- a/spacy/morphology.pyx
+++ b/spacy/morphology.pyx
@@ -152,7 +152,10 @@ cdef class Morphology:
         self.tags = PreshMap()
         # Add special space symbol. We prefix with underscore, to make sure it
         # always sorts to the end.
-        space_attrs = tag_map.get('SP', {POS: SPACE})
+        if '_SP' in tag_map:
+            space_attrs = tag_map.get('_SP')
+        else:
+            space_attrs = tag_map.get('SP', {POS: SPACE})
         if '_SP' not in tag_map:
             self.strings.add('_SP')
             tag_map = dict(tag_map)