diff --git a/pkgs/development/python-modules/cchardet/default.nix b/pkgs/development/python-modules/cchardet/default.nix
index e1c27d9e4fb1..587d0d1f6c12 100644
--- a/pkgs/development/python-modules/cchardet/default.nix
+++ b/pkgs/development/python-modules/cchardet/default.nix
@@ -1,4 +1,5 @@
 { lib
+, stdenv
 , buildPythonPackage
 , fetchPypi
 , python
@@ -20,9 +21,14 @@ buildPythonPackage rec {
 
   checkInputs = [ nose ];
 
+  # on non x86-64 some charsets are identified as their superset, so we skip these tests (last checked with version 2.1.7)
   preCheck = ''
     cp -R src/tests $TMPDIR
     pushd $TMPDIR
+  '' + lib.optionalString (stdenv.hostPlatform.system != "x86_64-linux") ''
+    rm $TMPDIR/tests/testdata/th/tis-620.txt  # identified as iso-8859-11, which is fine for all practical purposes
+    rm $TMPDIR/tests/testdata/ga/iso-8859-1.txt  # identified as windows-1252, which is fine for all practical purposes
+    rm $TMPDIR/tests/testdata/fi/iso-8859-1.txt  # identified as windows-1252, which is fine for all practical purposes
   '';
 
   checkPhase = ''