diff --git a/gensim/models/phrases.py b/gensim/models/phrases.py
index be735b865a..aa7a727c74 100644
--- a/gensim/models/phrases.py
+++ b/gensim/models/phrases.py
@@ -69,6 +69,10 @@
 
 from gensim import utils, interfaces
 
+from joblib import Parallel, delayed
+import threading
+lock = threading.Lock()
+
 logger = logging.getLogger(__name__)
 
 
@@ -95,6 +99,37 @@ def _is_single(obj):
         # If the first item isn't a string, assume obj is a corpus
         return False, obj_iter
 
+def count_vocab(self,sentence_no, sentence):
+    self.sentence_no = sentence_no
+
+    if sentence_no % self.progress_per == 0:
+        logger.info("PROGRESS: at sentence #%i, processed %i words and %i word types" %
+            (sentence_no, self.total_words, len(self.vocab)))
+
+    sentence = [utils.any2utf8(w) for w in sentence]
+
+    for bigram in zip(sentence, sentence[1:]):
+        lock.acquire()
+        try:
+            self.vocab[bigram[0]] += 1
+            self.vocab[self.delimiter.join(bigram)] += 1
+        finally:
+            lock.release()
+        self.total_words += 1
+        
+
+    if sentence:  # add last word skipped by previous loop
+        word = sentence[-1]
+        lock.acquire()
+        try:
+            self.vocab[word] += 1
+        finally:
+            lock.release()
+
+    if len(self.vocab) > self.max_vocab_size:
+        utils.prune_vocab(self.vocab, self.min_reduce)
+        self.min_reduce += 1
+    
 
 class Phrases(interfaces.TransformationABC):
     """
@@ -106,7 +141,7 @@ class Phrases(interfaces.TransformationABC):
 
     """
     def __init__(self, sentences=None, min_count=5, threshold=10.0,
-                 max_vocab_size=40000000, delimiter=b'_', progress_per=10000):
+                 max_vocab_size=40000000, delimiter=b'_', progress_per=1000):
         """
         Initialize the model from an iterable of `sentences`. Each sentence must be
         a list of words (unicode strings) that will be used for training.
@@ -157,35 +192,31 @@ def __str__(self):
             self.__class__.__name__, len(self.vocab), self.min_count,
             self.threshold, self.max_vocab_size)
 
+    
+
+
     @staticmethod
-    def learn_vocab(sentences, max_vocab_size, delimiter=b'_', progress_per=10000):
+    def learn_vocab(self, sentences, max_vocab_size, delimiter=b'_', progress_per=10000):
         """Collect unigram/bigram counts from the `sentences` iterable."""
-        sentence_no = -1
-        total_words = 0
+        self.sentence_no = -1
+        self.total_words = 0
         logger.info("collecting all words and their counts")
-        vocab = defaultdict(int)
-        min_reduce = 1
-        for sentence_no, sentence in enumerate(sentences):
-            if sentence_no % progress_per == 0:
-                logger.info("PROGRESS: at sentence #%i, processed %i words and %i word types" %
-                            (sentence_no, total_words, len(vocab)))
-            sentence = [utils.any2utf8(w) for w in sentence]
-            for bigram in zip(sentence, sentence[1:]):
-                vocab[bigram[0]] += 1
-                vocab[delimiter.join(bigram)] += 1
-                total_words += 1
-
-            if sentence:  # add last word skipped by previous loop
-                word = sentence[-1]
-                vocab[word] += 1
-
-            if len(vocab) > max_vocab_size:
-                utils.prune_vocab(vocab, min_reduce)
-                min_reduce += 1
+        self.vocab = defaultdict(int)
+        self.min_reduce = 1
+        self.max_vocab_size = max_vocab_size
+        self.delimiter = delimiter
+        self.progress_per = progress_per
+
+        Parallel(n_jobs= -1, backend="threading")\
+        (delayed (count_vocab)(self, sentence_no, sentence)\
+            for sentence_no, sentence in enumerate(sentences))
 
         logger.info("collected %i word types from a corpus of %i words (unigram + bigrams) and %i sentences" %
-                    (len(vocab), total_words, sentence_no + 1))
-        return min_reduce, vocab
+                (len(self.vocab), self.total_words, self.sentence_no + 1))
+
+        return self.min_reduce, self.vocab
+
+
 
     def add_vocab(self, sentences):
         """
@@ -197,7 +228,7 @@ def add_vocab(self, sentences):
         # directly, but gives the new sentences a fighting chance to collect
         # sufficient counts, before being pruned out by the (large) accummulated
         # counts collected in previous learn_vocab runs.
-        min_reduce, vocab = self.learn_vocab(sentences, self.max_vocab_size, self.delimiter, self.progress_per)
+        min_reduce, vocab = self.learn_vocab(self, sentences, self.max_vocab_size, self.delimiter, self.progress_per)
 
         if len(self.vocab) > 0:
             logger.info("merging %i counts into %s", len(vocab), self)
diff --git a/setup.py b/setup.py
index fa4b5caa8a..2d15edebba 100644
--- a/setup.py
+++ b/setup.py
@@ -235,6 +235,7 @@ def finalize_options(self):
     'annoy',
     'tensorflow >= 1.1.0',
     'keras >= 2.0.4',
+    'joblib',
 ]
 
 setup(