Unable to download nltk data

Question

import nltk
nltk.download()

It shows [SSL:CERTIFICATE_VERIFY_FAILED]. In case of requests one can use verify=False, but what to do here.

UPDATE:

This error persists on Python 3.6, with NLTK 3.0, on Mac OS X 10.7.5:

Changing the index in the NLTK downloader (suggested here) allows the downloader to show all of NLTK's files, but when one tries to download all, one gets another SSL error (see bottom of photo):

Answer 1

I had the same problem when trying to configure both nltk and SpaCy. Per the instructions in this question, I was able to overcome the issue. Try running /Applications/Python\ 3.6/Install\ Certificates.command, then retry your NLTK download

Answer 2

On MacOS 10.12.6 this was solved by entering the following in the bash terminal

pip install certifi
/Applications/Python\ 3.6/Install\ Certificates.command

the usual method of installing nltk corpora then worked for me

import nltk
nltk.download()