I still don’t know if it goes ground floor, second floor or ground floor, first floor, second floor
What century is it if the year is 500? First century. What about if the year is -500 (500 BCE)? It’s the first century BCE. You have now arrived at US numbering of “floors”. Now which century is zeroth? It doesn’t make sense to ask, just like having a floor numbered “zero”. This might be why the ground floor is not special to us.
Are we on the number line, or counting the spaces, or counting additional layers? It’s an arbitrary question or distinction, but it seems like it should be labeled somewhere in the elevator!
All I learned from this thread is that the word “floor” looks wrong to me now, on so many levels.
Just 1. The ground floor.
Ground floor is 1st floor.
I’ve never seen an elevator using any other way of counting floors, so I think the buttons on an elevator are a pretty convincing piece of evidence to figure this out. But then, I’ve also never been on an elevator outside of the US. However, I do believe Otis was the first elevator and they started in the US, so the way we do it is the correct way. 😤
When using the English word ‘floor’ counting ground floor as ‘first floor’ makes sense – ground level still has a floor and it is the first one, but it is still counted differently in different English-speaking countries. Other languages (at least Polish) have separate word for ‘non-ground level of the building’ so those are counted.
In Polish we have the word ‘parter’ for the ground floor (lowest non-basement level of the building) and ‘piętro’ for any level above it. So it is: (‘piwnica’ (basement), ) ‘parter’, ‘1 piętro’, ‘2 piętro’… This makes complete sense… but I still remember it being confusing when I was a kid. A ‘floor’ (the bottom of a room) is ‘podłoga’.
So, answering the question: there are three ‘podłogas’ under the second ‘piętro’ here.
In addition to that, in Czech we sometimes just call what would be the first floor above ground level “mezanin” and shift everything up by one more level, though it’s becoming rare. In the house where I live they got rid of this last time they replaced the elevator. I’ve been joking that they forced me to move up from 2nd to 3rd floor with it.
Red has first floor = ground floor. Blue has first floor above ground floor.
They are on stilts - you can walk underneath the first floor!
The US base calls them first level and second level. The British base calls them operational level and upper level.
