diff --git a/parse.y b/parse.y
index 324ad6b852..b0f3622604 100644
--- a/parse.y
+++ b/parse.y
@@ -6572,7 +6572,7 @@ tokadd_string(struct parser_params *p,
 		if (!parser_tokadd_utf8(p, &enc, term,
 					func & STR_FUNC_SYMBOL,
 					func & STR_FUNC_REGEXP)) {
-		    return -1;
+		    continue;
 		}
 		continue;