Comment by est

    import mmap, codecs

    from collections import Counter

    def word_count(filepath):

        freq = Counter()
    
        decode = codecs.getincrementaldecoder('utf-8')().decode
    
        with open(filepath, 'rb') as f, mmap.mmap(f.fileno(), 0, access=mmap.ACCESS_READ) as mm:
        
                for chunk in iter(lambda: mm.read(65536), b''):
            
                        freq.update(decode(chunk).split())
            
                    freq.update(decode(b'', final=True).split())
        
                return freq