diff --git a/u4.word_count.py b/u4.word_count.py
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b97615c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/u4.word_count.py
@@ -0,0 +1,8 @@
+def count_words(sentence):
+    cleaned = "".join(c if c.isalnum() or c == "'" else " " for c in sentence.lower())
+    counts = {}
+    for word in cleaned.split():
+        word = word.strip("'")
+        if word:
+            counts[word] = counts.get(word, 0) + 1
+    return counts
\ No newline at end of file