diff --git a/lisp/language/european.el b/lisp/language/european.el
index df95992f655..572ed7eb3ca 100644
--- a/lisp/language/european.el
+++ b/lisp/language/european.el
@@ -56,9 +56,10 @@
       (setq default-input-method input-method))
 
   ;; If this is a Latin-N character set, set up syntax for it in
-  ;; single-byte mode.
+  ;; single-byte mode.  We can't use require because the file
+  ;; must be eval'd each time.
   (if (string-match "^Latin-\\([1-9]\\)$" language)
-      (require (intern (downcase language)))))
+      (load (downcase language))))
 
 ;; Latin-1 (ISO-8859-1)