Writing a Python Function that returns a list of the most common words in a text file?

Question

I'm having a bit of difficulty figuring this out. This function is supposed to do the following/adhere to the following guidelines:

def mostCommonWords(filename, N):
    return "stub"
- Read the file from filename in your function and returns a dictionary 
with the frequency of each word as its value.
- Words are separated by whitespace characters, but do not include
the following punctuation characters (,.!?;). You can assume contractions
count as one word (i.e. "don't", "you'll", etc. are one word).
- The split and strip functions may be useful.
- You can assume contractions count as one word 
(i.e. "don't", "you'll", etc. are one word).
- Your function should open the file for reading, and close
the file before returning.

I have the helper function completed:

def wordFrequency(filename):
    frequency = {}
    file = open(filename, 'r')
    for line in file.readlines():
        for word in line.strip().split():
            if word not in frequency:
                frequency[word] = 0
            frequency[word] += 1
        file.close()
    return frequency

However, I am unsure how to go from here. Could anyone provide some guidance?

Answer 1

I guess the next step would be to learn how to sort your result from highest to lowest, and then decide a way to represent this information to the user. Probably the simplest would be to print it.

I guess the N parameter intends to limit how many values(words) you print?