NLTK is great for learning, but yeah, it can be slow. If you're dealing with big texts, spaCy is the way to go for english parsing python. It's optimized for speed and handles dependencies really well.
For slang/contractions, check out the `contractions` library—super handy for preprocessing. Also, spaCy's `en_core_web_lg` model gives better accuracy but is heavier.
Here's a quick snippet for cleaning text before parsing:
```python
import contractions
text = "I can't wait to see y'all!"
fixed = contractions.fix(text) # "I cannot wait to see you all!"
```
For slang/contractions, check out the `contractions` library—super handy for preprocessing. Also, spaCy's `en_core_web_lg` model gives better accuracy but is heavier.
Here's a quick snippet for cleaning text before parsing:
```python
import contractions
text = "I can't wait to see y'all!"
fixed = contractions.fix(text) # "I cannot wait to see you all!"
```
