diff --git a/nltk/classify/scikitlearn.py b/nltk/classify/scikitlearn.py
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..1854038d4d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/nltk/classify/scikitlearn.py
@@ -0,0 +1,86 @@
+from nltk.classify.api import ClassifierI
+
+import numpy as np
+
+
+class SklearnClassifier(ClassifierI):
+    """Wrapper for scikit-learn classifiers."""
+
+    def __init__(self, estimator, dtype=float, sparse=True):
+        """
+        :param estimator: scikit-learn classifier object.
+
+        :dtype: data type used when building feature array. Use e.g. bool
+            when all features are binary.
+
+        :sparse: Whether to use sparse matrices. Note that the estimator
+            must support these; not all scikit-learn classifiers do.
+        """
+        self._clf = estimator
+        self._dtype = dtype
+        self._sparse = sparse
+
+    def batch_classify(self, featuresets):
+        X = self._featuresets_to_array(featuresets)
+        y = self._clf.predict(X)
+        return [self._index_label[int(yi)] for yi in y]
+
+    def classify(self, featureset):
+        return self.batch_classify([featureset])
+
+    def labels(self):
+        return self._label_index.keys()
+
+    def train(self, labeled_featuresets):
+        self._feature_index = {}
+        self._index_label = []
+        self._label_index = {}
+
+        for fs, label in labeled_featuresets:
+            for f in fs.iterkeys():
+                if f not in self._feature_index:
+                    self._feature_index[f] = len(self._feature_index)
+            if label not in self._label_index:
+                self._index_label.append(label)
+                self._label_index[label] = len(self._label_index)
+
+        featuresets, labels = zip(*labeled_featuresets)
+        #featuresets = [fs for fs, _ in labeled_featuresets]
+        X = self._featuresets_to_array(featuresets)
+        y = np.array([self._label_index[l] for l in labels])
+
+        self._clf.fit(X, y)
+
+        return self
+
+    def _featuresets_to_array(self, featuresets):
+        if self._sparse:
+            from scipy.sparse import lil_matrix
+            zeros = lil_matrix
+        else:
+            zeros = np.zeros
+
+        X = zeros((len(featuresets), len(self._feature_index)),
+                  dtype=self._dtype)
+
+        for i, fs in enumerate(featuresets):
+            for f, v in fs.iteritems():
+                try:
+                    X[i, self._feature_index[f]] = self._dtype(v)
+                except KeyError:    # feature not seen in training
+                    pass
+
+        return X
+
+
+if __name__ == "__main__":
+    from nltk.classify.util import names_demo, binary_names_demo_features
+    from sklearn.naive_bayes import BernoulliNB
+    from sklearn.svm.sparse import LinearSVC
+
+    print("scikit-learn Naive Bayes:")
+    names_demo(SklearnClassifier(BernoulliNB(), dtype=bool).train,
+               features=binary_names_demo_features)
+    print("scikit-learn linear SVM:")
+    names_demo(SklearnClassifier(LinearSVC(), dtype=bool).train,
+               features=binary_names_demo_features)