diff --git a/LLama/LLamaModel.cs b/LLama/LLamaModel.cs
index cced0987..6ca9ebd4 100644
--- a/LLama/LLamaModel.cs
+++ b/LLama/LLamaModel.cs
@@ -7,6 +7,7 @@ using System.Collections.Generic;
 using System.Diagnostics;
 using System.IO;
 using System.Linq;
+using System.Text;
 
 namespace LLama
 {
@@ -463,12 +464,12 @@ namespace LLama
         /// <param name="text">The utf-8 encoded string to tokenize.</param>
         /// <returns>A list of tokens.</returns>
         /// <exception cref="RuntimeError">If the tokenization failed.</exception>
-        public List<llama_token> Tokenize(string text)
+        public List<llama_token> Tokenize(string text, string encoding = "UTF-8")
         {
             Debug.Assert(_ctx.DangerousGetHandle() != IntPtr.Zero);
             var n_ctx = NativeApi.llama_n_ctx(_ctx);
             var tokens = new llama_token[n_ctx];
-            var n_tokens = NativeApi.llama_tokenize(_ctx, text, tokens, n_ctx, true);
+            var n_tokens = NativeApi.llama_tokenize(_ctx, text, Encoding.GetEncoding(encoding), tokens, n_ctx, true);
             if (n_tokens < 0)
             {
                 throw new RuntimeError($"Failed to tokenize: text=\"{text}\" n_tokens={n_tokens}");
diff --git a/LLama/Native/NativeApi.cs b/LLama/Native/NativeApi.cs
index 71bfcc6b..07ac4efe 100644
--- a/LLama/Native/NativeApi.cs
+++ b/LLama/Native/NativeApi.cs
@@ -176,8 +176,27 @@ namespace LLama.Native
         /// <param name="n_max_tokens"></param>
         /// <param name="add_bos"></param>
         /// <returns></returns>
-        [DllImport(libraryName)] 
-        public static extern int llama_tokenize(SafeLLamaContextHandle ctx, string text, llama_token[] tokens, int n_max_tokens, bool add_bos);
+        public static int llama_tokenize(SafeLLamaContextHandle ctx, string text, Encoding encoding, llama_token[] tokens, int n_max_tokens, bool add_bos)
+        {
+            var bytes = encoding.GetBytes(text);
+            sbyte[] data = new sbyte[bytes.Length];
+            for(int i = 0; i < bytes.Length; i++)
+            {
+                data[i] = (sbyte)bytes[i];
+                //if (bytes[i] < 128)
+                //{
+                //    data[i] = (sbyte)bytes[i];
+                //}
+                //else
+                //{
+                //    data[i] = (sbyte)(~((sbyte)(~bytes[i] + 1)) + 1);
+                //}
+            }
+            return llama_tokenize_native(ctx, data, tokens, n_max_tokens, add_bos);
+        }
+
+        [DllImport(libraryName, EntryPoint = "llama_tokenize")]
+        public static extern int llama_tokenize_native(SafeLLamaContextHandle ctx, sbyte[] text, llama_token[] tokens, int n_max_tokens, bool add_bos);
 
         [DllImport(libraryName)]
         public static extern int llama_n_vocab(SafeLLamaContextHandle ctx);
diff --git a/LLama/Utils.cs b/LLama/Utils.cs
index 5c04a30f..911ad61e 100644
--- a/LLama/Utils.cs
+++ b/LLama/Utils.cs
@@ -52,11 +52,12 @@ namespace LLama
             return ctx;
         }
 
-        public static List<llama_token> llama_tokenize(SafeLLamaContextHandle ctx, string text, bool add_bos, string encoding)
+        public static List<llama_token> llama_tokenize(SafeLLamaContextHandle ctx, string text, bool add_bos, string encodingName)
         {
-            var cnt = Encoding.GetEncoding(encoding).GetByteCount(text);
+            var encoding = Encoding.GetEncoding(encodingName);
+            var cnt = encoding.GetByteCount(text);
             llama_token[] res = new llama_token[cnt + (add_bos ? 1 : 0)];
-            int n = NativeApi.llama_tokenize(ctx, text, res, res.Length, add_bos);
+            int n = NativeApi.llama_tokenize(ctx, text, encoding, res, res.Length, add_bos);
             if(n < 0)
             {
                 throw new RuntimeError("Error happened during tokenization. It's possibly caused by wrong encoding. Please try to " +