diff --git a/src/llama-vocab.cpp b/src/llama-vocab.cpp
index b61397311aa..04183efc4d0 100644
--- a/src/llama-vocab.cpp
+++ b/src/llama-vocab.cpp
@@ -754,7 +754,7 @@ struct llm_tokenizer_wpm_session {
 
     void tokenize(const std::string & text, std::vector<llama_token> & output) {
         // normalize and split by whitespace
-        std::vector<std::string> words = preprocess(text);
+        std::vector<std::string> words = preprocess(text, vocab.get_normalizer_lowercase());
         // bos token prepended already
 
         // find the longest tokens that form the words
@@ -799,7 +799,7 @@ struct llm_tokenizer_wpm_session {
     }
 
     // TODO: reduce string copies by using cpts_offs array
-    static std::vector<std::string> preprocess(const std::string & text)  {
+    static std::vector<std::string> preprocess(const std::string & text, bool lowercase)  {
         const std::vector<uint32_t> cpts_nfd = unicode_cpts_normalize_nfd(unicode_cpts_from_utf8(text));
         std::vector<std::string> words(1, "");
 
@@ -818,7 +818,7 @@ struct llm_tokenizer_wpm_session {
                 continue;
             }
 
-            const std::string s = unicode_cpt_to_utf8(unicode_tolower(cpt));
+            const std::string s = unicode_cpt_to_utf8(lowercase ? unicode_tolower(cpt) : cpt);
             if (flags.is_punctuation || ( cpt < 0x7F && flags.is_symbol ) || is_chinese_char(cpt)) {
                 if (words.back().size()) {  // finish previous word if any
                     words.emplace_back();
@@ -2159,6 +2159,7 @@ void llama_vocab::impl::load(llama_model_loader & ml, const LLM_KV & kv) {
             } else if (
                     tokenizer_pre == "whitespace") {
                 pre_type = LLAMA_VOCAB_PRE_TYPE_WHITESPACE;
+                normalizer_lowercase = false;
             } else if (
                     tokenizer_pre == "refact") {
                 pre_type = LLAMA_VOCAB_PRE_TYPE_REFACT;
@@ -2339,9 +2340,8 @@ void llama_vocab::impl::load(llama_model_loader & ml, const LLM_KV & kv) {
             pre_type = LLAMA_VOCAB_PRE_TYPE_DEFAULT;
         }
 
-        ml.get_key(LLM_KV_TOKENIZER_ADD_PREFIX,           add_space_prefix,         false);
-        ml.get_key(LLM_KV_TOKENIZER_REMOVE_EXTRA_WS,      remove_extra_whitespaces, false);
-        ml.get_key(LLM_KV_TOKENIZER_NORMALIZER_LOWERCASE, normalizer_lowercase,     false);
+        ml.get_key(LLM_KV_TOKENIZER_ADD_PREFIX,      add_space_prefix,         false);
+        ml.get_key(LLM_KV_TOKENIZER_REMOVE_EXTRA_WS, remove_extra_whitespaces, false);
     }
 
     const int token_idx = gguf_find_key(ctx, kv(LLM_KV_TOKENIZER_LIST).c_str());
@@ -2511,6 +2511,9 @@ void llama_vocab::impl::load(llama_model_loader & ml, const LLM_KV & kv) {
             }
         }
 
+        // Lowercase normalizer flag (consulted by WPM / whitespace BPE)
+        ml.get_key(LLM_KV_TOKENIZER_NORMALIZER_LOWERCASE, normalizer_lowercase, false);
+
         // auto-detect special tokens by text
         // TODO: convert scripts should provide these tokens through the KV metadata LLM_KV_TOKENIZER_...
         //       for now, we apply this workaround to find the tokens based on their text