Apache modrewrite .htaccess - similar link - regex

Question

I am wondering if it is possible to achieve this bellow:
Sometimes second attribute will be submenu
RewriteRule ^([\w-]+)/([\w-]+)/?$ index.php?menu=$1&submenu=$2 [L,QSA]
Sometimes it will be location
RewriteRule ^([\w-]+)/([\w-]+)/?$ index.php?menu=$1&news=$2 [L,QSA]
But normally, this way it does not work. Is there any possible way to achieve this?
EDIT:
Current complete rewrite rule:
RewriteEngine on
ErrorDocument 404 /error
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d [OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f
RewriteRule ^ - [L]
RewriteRule ^([\w-]+)/?$ index.php?menu=$1 [L,QSA]
RewriteRule ^([\w-]+)/([\w-]+)/?$ index.php?menu=$1&news=$2 [L,QSA]
RewriteRule ^([\w-]+)/([\w-]+)/?$ index.php?menu=$1&submenu=$2 [L,QSA]
RewriteRule ^([\w-]+)/([\w-]+)/([\w-]+)/?$ index.php?menu=$1&submenu=$2&news=$3 [L,QSA]

Answer 1

To elaborate on my comment further you can have rules like this:
ErrorDocument 404 /error
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d [OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f
RewriteRule ^ - [L]
RewriteRule ^([\w-]+)/?$ index.php?menu=$1 [L,QSA]
RewriteRule ^([\w-]+)/n-([\w-]+)/?$ index.php?menu=$1&news=$2 [L,QSA]
RewriteRule ^([\w-]+)/([\w-]+)/?$ index.php?menu=$1&submenu=$2 [L,QSA]
RewriteRule ^([\w-]+)/([\w-]+)/([\w-]+)/?$ index.php?menu=$1&submenu=$2&news=$3 [L,QSA]
Now your news links should like this: http://domain.com/main-menu/n-sports

Answer 2

Consider that your regex starts matching \w, which stands for "word character", usually [A-Za-z0-9_]. Notice the inclusion of the underscore and digits. This also means that this doesn't match accented characters for example. For sure this don't match the leading slash that begins every path in urls.
You should change your rewrites adding a leading slash:
RewriteRule ^/([\w-]+)/?$ index.php?menu=$1 [L,QSA]
RewriteRule ^/([\w-]+)/([\w-]+)/?$ index.php?menu=$1&news=$2 [L,QSA]
# RewriteRule ^/([\w-]+)/([\w-]+)/?$ index.php?menu=$1&submenu=$2 [L,QSA]
RewriteRule ^/([\w-]+)/([\w-]+)/([\w-]+)/?$ index.php?menu=$1&submenu=$2&news=$3 [L,QSA]
I have also commented the third rule because the regex is identical to the second. Your approach also have a logical problem, since there is no difference between these lines, so there is no way to call index.php?menu=$1&submenu=$2