# BCS: živim na trgu Republike, a on na Francuske Republike



## sesperxes

Dear foreros,

in a sentence like this (živim na trgu Republike, a on na Francuske Republike), may I ommit the "trgu" if we both live in squares?

In a more general case,  in a colloquial way may I say directly "kuća mi je na Mire Bano, na Marka Marulića, na Josipa Broza..." without "ulici"? (in case that in that town everybody knows that these proper names are given to streets, and not to parks, stadiums or bridges, of course).

Thanks for your help.


----------



## Anicetus

No, you can't leave a genitive attribute (such as _Republike_ or _Francuske Republike_) alone. The genitive attribute always comes together with the word it refers to.

However, if a square has an adjectival attribute in its name, it can be used alone. The adjective doesn't have to be in the square's official name, names of squares in the form _Trg + [name and surname in genitive]_ are often shortened to _[possessive adjective from the surname] + trg_ in common speech, ie. Trg Marka Marulića -> Marulićev trg, Trg Josipa Broza Tita -> Titov trg. So, for example:
_Živim na Marulićevom trgu, a on na Titovom_
is perfectly normal.

The same applies to streets and everything else.


----------



## VelikiMag

sesperxes said:


> In a more general case,  in a colloquial way may I say directly "kuća mi je na Mire Bano, na Marka Marulića, na Josipa Broza..." without "ulici"?


Yes, you may. But the proper preposition for _ulica_ is in this case "u" and not "na".

This is especially the case when someone is giving directions, word _ulica_ would be completely omitted:
_Iz Mire Bano ideš u Marka Marulića, pa odatle skreneš u Josipa Broza._


----------



## itreius

sesperxes said:


> In a more general case,  in a colloquial way may I say directly "kuća mi je na Mire Bano, na Marka Marulića, na Josipa Broza..." without "ulici"?


To me the most natural informal way to say it would be _u Marulićevoj_, _u Brozovoj_, i.e. _kuća mi je u Brozovoj_ or _živim u Brozovoj_.


----------



## Duya

Anicetus said:


> No, you can't.





VelikiMag said:


> Yes, you may.



Um, I have a strong feeling of contradiction .

Anicetus is technically right that you can't omit the head noun when the attribute is in genitive, but for the special case of streets it is usually not followed. So the examples given by Veliki Mag are quite realistic; on the other hand, people will often turn the genitive into possessive, to make the phrase nicer (and properly declinable). 

Just recently I've read a recommendation by Serbian linguists to use possessive in street names wherever possible, to make the name declinable. Note that genitive must be used for multi-word phrases (_Ulica Džona Lenona_), but it will be usually shortened to _Lenonova_ (or just _Džona Lenona_) wherever the context is clear.

However, _trg_ is usually not omitted in this way, because it is both short and marked, so the title of this threas is an unlikely utterance.


----------



## sesperxes

> . The adjective doesn't have to be in the square's official name, names of squares in the form _Trg + [name and surname in genitive]_ are often shortened to _[possessive adjective from the surname] + trg_ in common speech, ie. Trg Marka Marulića -> Marulićev trg, Trg Josipa Broza Tita -> Titov trg.



Thanks for your help, but your answer makes me put another one: this possibility of changing full street name (name+surname) to simplified with possesive means that in a town I'll never find an ulica Nikole Tesle and a Teslina ulica because these are two ways of saying the same? (being the first one, the offical name, and the second one, the colloquial name).


----------



## Duya

That's true. But who would name two streets in the same city after the same person? Even the late _Maršal_ haven't had that honor.


----------



## sesperxes

> Just recently I've read a recommendation by Serbian linguists to use  possessive in street names wherever possible, to make the name  declinable. Note that genitive must be used for multi-word phrases (_Ulica Džona Lenona_), but it will be usually shortened to _Lenonova_ (or just _Džona Lenona_) wherever the context is clear.




I'm reading the žute stranice of Zagreb and a map of Podgorica and all the names of streets are shown directly in genitive (there's no Abramović, Adamis


----------



## Anicetus

That's right, when writing down an address, _Ulica_ is almost always omitted and the genitive is left alone. _Trg_ isn't omitted, though. However, the plain genitive just doesn't sound good to me actually put in a sentence, except when dictating an address or in a similar special context.



sesperxes said:


> Thanks for your help, but your answer makes me put another one: this possibility of changing full street name (name+surname) to simplified with possesive means that in a town I'll never find an ulica Nikole Tesle and a Teslina ulica because these are two ways of saying the same? (being the first one, the offical name, and the second one, the colloquial name).



You usually won't, but as a bit of trivia -- Zagreb does have both _Vukovarska ulica_ and _Ulica grada Vukovara_. Despite that, people call _Ulica grada Vukovara_ simply _Vukovarska_ all the time, and when you hear _Vukovarska_ in Zagreb, it usually refers to _Ulica grada Vukovara_. That's because the former is an obscure street on the periphery, while the latter is one of the city's principal streets. The obscure one has probably been called like that for a longer time, as _Ulica grada Vukovara_ received its name after 1991, when its old name had no longer been considered appropriate and when many cities in Croatia renamed one of their streets after Vukovar.


----------

