for my $elem (@phrase) { 
    $wordfreq{$elem}++;
}

##</code><code>##

# or even shorter, but perhaps a bit unreadable:
$wordfreq{$_} for (@phrase);

##</code><code>##

$wordfreq{$_}++ for (@phrase);

##</code><code>##

foreach my $key (sort keys %wordfreq) {
    print "$key: $wordfreq{$key}\n";
}