import string
def count_words(sentence: str) -> dict[str, int]:

    sentence = sentence.lower()

    for char in sentence:
        if not char.isalnum() and char not in ("'", " "):
            sentence = sentence.replace(char, " ")

    words = sentence.split()
    result = {}
    for word in words:
        cleaned_word = word.strip("'")
        if cleaned_word:
            result[cleaned_word] = result.get(cleaned_word, 0) + 1

    return result