diff --git a/django/utils/text.py b/django/utils/text.py
index 624f5b6a55..5d633b7afe 100644
--- a/django/utils/text.py
+++ b/django/utils/text.py
@@ -202,9 +202,14 @@ javascript_quote = allow_lazy(javascript_quote, unicode)
 # Expression to match some_token and some_token="with spaces" (and similarly
 # for single-quoted strings).
 smart_split_re = re.compile(r"""
-    ([^\s"]*"(?:[^"\\]*(?:\\.[^"\\]*)*)"\S*|
-     [^\s']*'(?:[^'\\]*(?:\\.[^'\\]*)*)'\S*|
-     \S+)""", re.VERBOSE)
+    ((?:
+        [^\s'"]*
+        (?:
+            (?:"(?:[^"\\]|\\.)*" | '(?:[^'\\]|\\.)*')
+            [^\s'"]*
+        )+
+    ) | \S+)
+""", re.VERBOSE)
 
 def smart_split(text):
     r"""
diff --git a/tests/regressiontests/text/tests.py b/tests/regressiontests/text/tests.py
index 09b8c30398..82cb1267d1 100644
--- a/tests/regressiontests/text/tests.py
+++ b/tests/regressiontests/text/tests.py
@@ -27,6 +27,8 @@ friends'
 [u'url', u'search_page', u'words=hello']
 >>> list(smart_split(u'url search_page words="something else'))
 [u'url', u'search_page', u'words="something', u'else']
+>>> list(smart_split("cut:','|cut:' '"))
+[u"cut:','|cut:' '"]
 
 ### urlquote #############################################################
 >>> from django.utils.http import urlquote, urlquote_plus