diff --git a/scripts/geodata/address_expansions/equivalence.py b/scripts/geodata/address_expansions/equivalence.py
new file mode 100644
index 00000000..de26d7fc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/scripts/geodata/address_expansions/equivalence.py
@@ -0,0 +1,56 @@
+import random
+import re
+import six
+
+from itertools import izip
+
+from geodata.address_expansions.gazetteers import *
+from geodata.encoding import safe_decode, safe_encode
+from geodata.text.normalize import normalized_tokens
+from geodata.text.tokenize import tokenize_raw, token_types
+from geodata.text.utils import non_breaking_dash_regex
+
+
+def canonicals_for_language(data, language):
+    canonicals = set()
+
+    for d in data:
+        lang, dictionary, is_canonical, canonical = d.split(six.b('|'))
+        if language is None or lang == language:
+            canonicals.add(canonical)
+
+    return canonicals
+
+def equivalent(s1, s2, gazetteer, language):
+    '''
+    Address/place equivalence
+    -------------------------
+
+    OSM discourages abbreviations, but to make our training data map better
+    to real-world input, we can safely replace the canonical phrase with an
+    abbreviated version and retain the meaning of the words
+    '''
+
+    tokens_s1 = normalized_tokens(s1)
+    tokens_s2 = normalized_tokens(s2)
+
+    abbreviated_s1 = list(abbreviations_gazetteer.filter(tokens_s1))
+    abbreviated_s2 = list(abbreviations_gazetteer.filter(tokens_s2))
+
+    if len(abbreviated_s1) != len(abbreviated_s2):
+        return False
+
+    for ((t1, c1, l1, d1), (t2, c2, l2, d2)) in izip(abbreviated_s1, abbreviated_s2):
+        if c1 != token_types.PHRASE and c2 != token_types.PHRASE:
+            if t1 != t2:
+                return False
+        elif c2 == token_types.PHRASE and c2 == token_types.PHRASE:
+            canonicals_s1 = canonicals_for_language(d1, language)
+            canonicals_s2 = canonicals_for_language(d2, language)
+
+            if not canonicals_s1 & canonicals_s2:
+                return False
+        else:
+            return False
+
+    return True