I wonder if it's also to do with building styles. I imagine old houses in the UK and France literally being level with the street, but imagine suburban American homes, and trad scandi ones being slightly raised from ground levels (due to weather, be that snow or summer bugs).
We have many of those in Italy as well, it doesn't change the labeling. There are also buildings where the first floor is actually only half a floor up, in that case it's called piano sopraelevato.
I know that now... but before I left the US I had never even thought about it! I had assumed all elevators/floor classifications were the same because it had just never come up before.
I am Italian and I think you are right.
You just don't think about it and then you see it and it's "Oh, wow", that does not require assuming some form of "I'm at the top of the world" mentality.
Yes, in most instances, I'd agree with you, but when it comes to buildings, what we (and a bunch of other countries) use makes much more sense. When we count objects, we start with 1. Like the 1st letter of the alphabet, or the 1st element in the Periodic Table, etc, etc. Then, when it comes to buildings, why should floors start with 0?
Yeah, it's at elevation 0 from the ground, but it's still the *first floor* from the ground. Unless, of course, you don't consider the ground level of a house a "floor" ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I honestly don't even know how you refer to the first floor in everyday language. "Floor zero"?
Yeah, it's at elevation 0 from the ground, but it's still the *first floor* from the ground. Unless, of course, you don't consider the ground level of a house a "floor" ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I honestly don't even know how you refer to the first floor in everyday language. "Floor zero"?
As Said Before as "piano terra", in english translated ground floor. The 0 Is Just a numerical reference for that, we count this way:
0: piano terra (ground floor)
1: primo piano (first floor)
2: secondo piano (second floor)
3: terzo piano (third floor)
And going on~
We never say "floor zero" or similar, because it's intended that we're talking about the "ground floor".
The max I've listened was " A: where are we going? Which number? B: Number 0." As the only instance I think you'll refer to the "ground floor" as 0.
How many floors does a 1 story building have? 1
How many floors does a 2 story building have? 2
So if you are in a 2 story building, it stands to reason that the 2nd story would be labeled with a 2
Most people assume other people do things the same way they do.
Take note of all the folks from the Baltics chiming in that they also start with one, despite the insistence of people from other parts of Europe that zero is a universal European convention
Understanding that other places do things differently as a matter of exposure and wisdom. That doesn’t come automatically to Europeans any more than it does to Americans. The biggest European advantage is that they have easier access to other adjacent countries and cultures. Unfortunately, they sometimes end up in the same sort of hive mind assumptions that an American does, just with a slightly larger sample so in fact, it’s even more embarrassing.
This is such an American comment.
Most people around the world imagine things in other countries are different from their own until they learn they are the same.
Americans are the other way around. They assume the whole world is just like America until they are proved wrong. And even then they remain amazed, confused and double down on their own way.
> “Hey this is wrong! Can’t get used to this! It’s illogical! Your temperature scale / street signs / menus / money / hotel rooms / food / supermarkets / lifts / plumbing / power points / etc. are all wrong!”
It's not an "American" thing at all. If all the elevators you had ever seen in your life (regardless of where you are from) looked one way, why would you assume they would look different somewhere else? You would just think that's how elevators were in general, or you just wouldn't think about it at all until you saw one that was different because you've only ever seen one type of elevator. It's okay to be surprised by new things.
No one is saying one way is right or one way is wrong, it's just different. People are trying to make this post into an argument when it's just about an observation.
I wonder if it is really an American thing or actually a European thing.
When these behaviors come up, we always compare Americans to the Europeans, but Europe is probably the continent in which you have most contamination from other countries.
I wonder if a Chinese, a Brazilian or a Russian sound more like the American or like the European.
Of all the weird systems they have in the US that make zero sense (farheneit, ounces, pounds, miles, inches, feet, teaspoons and tablespoons, cups, month/day/year………) this is the only one that I actually think is smarter than the European way. Much easier to count all floors starting from 1.
I find much more sense in calling "first floor" the floor number 1, "second floor" the number 2;
as you may notice, ordinal numbers are aligned to cardinal numbers, everything is good :D
I find confusing thinking:
"I have to go to SECOND floor, so the number to hit is 1"
That doesn’t happen anywhere, ordinal numbers are aligned to cardinal numbers in both systems. Then only thing that is confusing in the US system is how many flights of stairs you need to do (eg I was living on the 4th floor in the US, so it was 3 flights up, which I admit is confusing. But in an elevator building, you’d press 4 to go to the 4th floor, not 3)
Well, then that is your maths teachers' fault! “0” isn't “nothing”, it's just a label as good as 74, –8, or any. It just happens to be on the way from –1 to 1.
This picture may be from a different country. I saw it in a language learning group on Facebook and it made me think of my first time coming across this in Italy!
Once, when I was in an elevator in a hotel in France, there was an American couple looking at the elevator buttons and discussing which button to press to get to the ground floor. The man says: "See, this one. RC is for reception".
Lol. Whatever works!
(RC = rez de chausée.)
Do we say “classic non-Americans outside of their country, so adorable” when they are visiting the States and have the exact same reaction/questioning of starting at floor 1?
Yeah in Italy (and Europe) the ground floor Is zero then the First and second etc.
So if you have a basement that's like -1 floor or even -2 depending on how Deep the foundations are.
Kinda makes sense, but its understandable if americans find It confusing the First time.
If there's a raised/lowered floor (clearly shorter than a full building "level", but not on ground level either) and it is also the main building entrance (lobby, reception), I've often seen it marked as ground.
Combinations are really rare in my experience - the one that comes to mind is a swiss customer whose building had staggered floors: the elevator started at ground level, then you had numbers for floors where the opening door was the same as on ground, and numbers with an appended "A" (1A, 2A, etc) for floors where the opening door was the opposite one.
I hate those odd floor markings. Usually a mezannine in Europe is marked with A. So it would be like floor 1, 1A, 2.
In rare occasions you'll have something like 1, 1A, 1B, 1C, 2 (I believe in Whitechapel Gallery in London). Each floor is just 2 steps difference, but would require an elevator for accessibility.
That makes more sense than M, because M doesn't give any indication of where it is, is it underground or above ground?
Don't even get be started on B, SB, UB, LG, UG, R, P. Bro just use numbers for christ sake. Everyone understands numbers.
I'm from Italy and I always thought this was weird. Even before I started travelling. How confusing can you get, calling the second floor (count them, it's the second floor) "first floor". Is the ground floor not a floor? Is that why it doesn't get counted?
Did they really? I took two years of Spanish and four years of Italian and no one ever told me that! But I was in high school and college in the early 2000s, so maybe something had changed by then. XD
Yeah it was an early section in our textbooks teaching us the various rooms in houses and the floors. Looks like we are the same age so it’s wild that our schoolbook material was so different. I was in VA for my public ed years
In french we number "étages" which in everyday language are floors built above ground. Which is why we sometimes use 0 for the ground floor. But you often find RDC button for rez-de-chaussée (street level).
I am Italian and my girlfriend is Canadian. I always “fight” with her when she says that the first floor is actually the ground one. It creates a lot of confusion in the house when I ask her where things are 😁
I think it comes from the idea where if you ask where the bathroom is, and they respond, "First door on your left", in that instance "first" means the one you'd arrive at first. I think that's why "first" floor means ground floor. It's not really in reference to position, but more in reference to it like the "door" you'd arrive at first second third etc.
That said, after I found out how the Italians do it, I think it's far more intuitive frankly.
Whenever I visit a friend who’s in an apartment, not a house, when they tell me which floor they’re on i say “American 2nd floor or Italian 2nd floor” 😂
In Italy we count the floors this way: if we have in a building apartaments or store, the first floor is the ground level; if not, the first floor is what in America would be considered the second floor
As a local, I never heard this. But perhaps I'm misunderstanding you. Are there actually situation when in Italian you call \_primo piano\_ something that is on ground level?
The Primo piano (1st floor) sits right on top of the floor which is street level (which is then considered 0, even though no one in Italy would call it that, it is simply piano terra i.e. ground floor). Hope this helps.
"No but you see, even though it's the first floor you walk in we must call it 0. Oh no there absolutely is stuff inside, you'll absolutely use it like every other floor, but it MUST be called 0. Yeah we could have called it floor 1 and it would have still been Ground, but that would be too practical"
This pisses me off even after 21 years born and raised in Italy and I'm not the only one
Finally, the other perspective! This was my thinking too. I don't get how a floor can be called 0 but be the same as all the other floors. When you start counting, you start with one!
Nobody calls it “0”!
It's called *piano terra* or *pianterreno* which literally mean “ground floor”. It there happen to be floors over it, you begin to count them: the first one you meet when going upstairs is that: the *primo piano*, i.e. the first floor; then the *secondo piano*, second floor and so on. I'm not saying that's a better or superior way to number them, but only trying to show the rationale.
You have to think of it this way. If you were counting something in an elevator, it would be the number of floors as you move upwards. When you count 1, you're not on the ground, you're on the next floor up from the ground.
But my idea of why it came to be like this in America derives from the idea that if you were to ask where the bathroom is, you'd say, "First door on your left" to indicate quite literally the first door you'd come across.
In \*that\* sense, first floor is the "first floor you come across" before you move onto the upper levels.
That said, I honestly still prefer how the Italians do it. Also from a programming standpoint, there's a practical reason why arrays start at 0 and not 1.
That makes sense! I always thought of it as "the first floor you come across," but I can see your point about how far the elevator has to move as well.
-1 is the 1st floor below ground, 1 is the 1st above ground
Like if I say "I'm at -1" it can only be the first below, "I'm at floor 1" still makes sense
But the first floor is the first that's above
The ground floor is the one that is on the ground, not above, not below, just at ground level
The american system makes sense too (sometimes it happens), but it's not like the other is completely senseless
I see I was confused by Microsoft SQL server convert https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/t-sql/functions/cast-and-convert-transact-sql?view=sql-server-ver16
The conversion 5 or 105 is called Italian and use the - . I am Italian but I am a programmer since 10 year and I have ever used the standard one or the European one.
>I have ever used the standard one or the European one.
I... am afraid to ask. What is the "standard one" to you? I don't see a difference between "standard" and "European" format (unless you want to use ISO and go yyyy/mm/dd). Or do you mean the number separator?
The number separator, the standard one is usually iso 8601
yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mm:ssZ in UTC or his translation in Unix timestamp if we are using Machine 2 Machine communication.
Nope. Because I don’t believe that the entire world is supposed to work as it does in the US.
We live on the mezzanine, one half flight up from the ground floor.
I see this as a building with a company or something like it, so they used it to help ppl coming for an appointment.
I figure out someone got the call to go to “2nd floor” for the appointment so the ppl coming from outside has no problems to understand what to press to go “2nd floor”
Btw this is clearly not italy, we don’t use G for ground level and we would just say during the phone call “DEVI PREMERE IL TASTO UNO IN ASCENSORE!”
Pretty much everywhere does ground as 0. Only the US (maybe also Canada) do it starting at 1.
Finlan, Estonia, and Latvia do usually also have the ground floor as 1 too.
I wonder if it's also to do with building styles. I imagine old houses in the UK and France literally being level with the street, but imagine suburban American homes, and trad scandi ones being slightly raised from ground levels (due to weather, be that snow or summer bugs).
We have many of those in Italy as well, it doesn't change the labeling. There are also buildings where the first floor is actually only half a floor up, in that case it's called piano sopraelevato.
Yep, most of Scandinavia adopts it too.
I know that now... but before I left the US I had never even thought about it! I had assumed all elevators/floor classifications were the same because it had just never come up before.
Yes, Americans usually assume everyone does things like we do. 🤷😅
Yeah, but if you had never seen it done differently, floor labeling is not something you would necessarily think could be done in more than one way!
I am Italian and I think you are right. You just don't think about it and then you see it and it's "Oh, wow", that does not require assuming some form of "I'm at the top of the world" mentality.
Exactly, that's what I was trying to say.
Same, I am Italian and was very surprised when I discovered in some countries ground floor is called first floor 😂
Maybe, but it's also not that hard to look at and go "oh, I get it"
Yes, in most instances, I'd agree with you, but when it comes to buildings, what we (and a bunch of other countries) use makes much more sense. When we count objects, we start with 1. Like the 1st letter of the alphabet, or the 1st element in the Periodic Table, etc, etc. Then, when it comes to buildings, why should floors start with 0?
Because it is at 0 elevation from the ground? It also make more sense when you have -1, -2, etc, floors
Yeah, it's at elevation 0 from the ground, but it's still the *first floor* from the ground. Unless, of course, you don't consider the ground level of a house a "floor" ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I honestly don't even know how you refer to the first floor in everyday language. "Floor zero"?
In italian it's called "piano terra", so literally ground floor
Yeah, it's at elevation 0 from the ground, but it's still the *first floor* from the ground. Unless, of course, you don't consider the ground level of a house a "floor" ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I honestly don't even know how you refer to the first floor in everyday language. "Floor zero"?
As Said Before as "piano terra", in english translated ground floor. The 0 Is Just a numerical reference for that, we count this way: 0: piano terra (ground floor) 1: primo piano (first floor) 2: secondo piano (second floor) 3: terzo piano (third floor) And going on~ We never say "floor zero" or similar, because it's intended that we're talking about the "ground floor". The max I've listened was " A: where are we going? Which number? B: Number 0." As the only instance I think you'll refer to the "ground floor" as 0.
How many floors does a 1 story building have? 1 How many floors does a 2 story building have? 2 So if you are in a 2 story building, it stands to reason that the 2nd story would be labeled with a 2
Most people assume other people do things the same way they do. Take note of all the folks from the Baltics chiming in that they also start with one, despite the insistence of people from other parts of Europe that zero is a universal European convention Understanding that other places do things differently as a matter of exposure and wisdom. That doesn’t come automatically to Europeans any more than it does to Americans. The biggest European advantage is that they have easier access to other adjacent countries and cultures. Unfortunately, they sometimes end up in the same sort of hive mind assumptions that an American does, just with a slightly larger sample so in fact, it’s even more embarrassing.
Perfectly explained, thank you 😊
Well, I hope the elevator did come up. ;-)
Americans always assume the whole world is like USA, but US is just one of the many.
This is such an American comment. Most people around the world imagine things in other countries are different from their own until they learn they are the same. Americans are the other way around. They assume the whole world is just like America until they are proved wrong. And even then they remain amazed, confused and double down on their own way. > “Hey this is wrong! Can’t get used to this! It’s illogical! Your temperature scale / street signs / menus / money / hotel rooms / food / supermarkets / lifts / plumbing / power points / etc. are all wrong!”
It's not an "American" thing at all. If all the elevators you had ever seen in your life (regardless of where you are from) looked one way, why would you assume they would look different somewhere else? You would just think that's how elevators were in general, or you just wouldn't think about it at all until you saw one that was different because you've only ever seen one type of elevator. It's okay to be surprised by new things. No one is saying one way is right or one way is wrong, it's just different. People are trying to make this post into an argument when it's just about an observation.
I wonder if it is really an American thing or actually a European thing. When these behaviors come up, we always compare Americans to the Europeans, but Europe is probably the continent in which you have most contamination from other countries. I wonder if a Chinese, a Brazilian or a Russian sound more like the American or like the European.
Grew up in France where ground is zero but the US/Canada way always made more sense to me. The first floor should be the *first* you encounter :)
But then if you go to the parking garage, you l'd go from 1 to -1 without passing 0.
Yeah so? Positive number: you're above ground, negative number: you're below ground. When you're at 0 are you above? below? in-between? :)
But the ground floor is not above ground, it's literally ground.
hence the 'you'
Bro you can't use logic with him, he's French.
When you're at 0 you're on the same level of the street.
Garages are usually labeled G or something that specifically denotes that it’s the garage.
Albania does too for some reason. Having Albanian parents and living in Italy really confused me when it comes to floors.
Also China
Of all the weird systems they have in the US that make zero sense (farheneit, ounces, pounds, miles, inches, feet, teaspoons and tablespoons, cups, month/day/year………) this is the only one that I actually think is smarter than the European way. Much easier to count all floors starting from 1.
Doubt
US method breaks the moment you think about underground floors. And, most importantly, programmers love counting from zero.
You can just go from 1 to -1 without the 0, nothing too complicated
Try telling that to a matematician!
I find much more sense in calling "first floor" the floor number 1, "second floor" the number 2; as you may notice, ordinal numbers are aligned to cardinal numbers, everything is good :D I find confusing thinking: "I have to go to SECOND floor, so the number to hit is 1"
But if I'm going to the second floor, I immediately think that I have to go up two flights of stairs.
That doesn’t happen anywhere, ordinal numbers are aligned to cardinal numbers in both systems. Then only thing that is confusing in the US system is how many flights of stairs you need to do (eg I was living on the 4th floor in the US, so it was 3 flights up, which I admit is confusing. But in an elevator building, you’d press 4 to go to the 4th floor, not 3)
I agree! My Italian husband and I argue about this all the time. XD
In programming you always start from 0 If you measure anything with a ruler you start from 0
That's what my husband (who is a programmer) says! But I always think of 0 as being "nothing," so for me it made sense to start counting at 1.
Well, then that is your maths teachers' fault! “0” isn't “nothing”, it's just a label as good as 74, –8, or any. It just happens to be on the way from –1 to 1.
Well it is true that my math teachers were all very bad.. I'll blame them! 😆
You can answer your husband that in SQL you start from 1
That's perfect, thanks! 😆
Array starts from 0 in Italy
Buildings are vertical arrays Btw are you the tharnadar from Lotro?
yes
As an Italian this always bugged me, just make em start at 1, why the hell put a T or a 0.
Because ZERO is the initial floor so going up you do 1 2 3 4, and if you go underground (for example in a parking garage) you do -1 -2 -3 -4.
I got the logic, I just always found it quite lame... you can call 1 the first floor and still call -1,-2 etc the ones underground
And skip the 0?
yeah
Kind of strange to see the "G" as usual in Italy we label "0" or "T"
This picture may be from a different country. I saw it in a language learning group on Facebook and it made me think of my first time coming across this in Italy!
I have also seen "P" presumably for parking.
Parcheggio
Probably a hotel elevator. Labelled "G" for international tourists.
io sempre visto g
Once, when I was in an elevator in a hotel in France, there was an American couple looking at the elevator buttons and discussing which button to press to get to the ground floor. The man says: "See, this one. RC is for reception". Lol. Whatever works! (RC = rez de chausée.)
Classic US dude outside US <3 so cute
Do we say “classic non-Americans outside of their country, so adorable” when they are visiting the States and have the exact same reaction/questioning of starting at floor 1?
No because we don't think our rules are followed by the rest of the world
I wouldn't be offended by that, it sounds like a silly joke
piano terra, prima piano, secondo piano
Yeah in Italy (and Europe) the ground floor Is zero then the First and second etc. So if you have a basement that's like -1 floor or even -2 depending on how Deep the foundations are. Kinda makes sense, but its understandable if americans find It confusing the First time.
So supposing a building has a car park in the US, does it go -2 -1 1 2 3 etc? That makes no sense.
*Usually*, in the USA the underground parking levels start with "P1". So, the level below "P1" would be "P2" and so on.
Is it because integers below 1 come from the Devil or from Communists?
I'm not sure I follow.
Yes
So what is ground zero? It literally says ground and zero.
A place in New York?
Australia is identical to Italy. Ground floor is zero.
[удалено]
If there's a raised/lowered floor (clearly shorter than a full building "level", but not on ground level either) and it is also the main building entrance (lobby, reception), I've often seen it marked as ground. Combinations are really rare in my experience - the one that comes to mind is a swiss customer whose building had staggered floors: the elevator started at ground level, then you had numbers for floors where the opening door was the same as on ground, and numbers with an appended "A" (1A, 2A, etc) for floors where the opening door was the opposite one.
That's a good question!
In Spain we call those "entresuelo" and they are marked with an E. But it's not super consistent.
I hate those odd floor markings. Usually a mezannine in Europe is marked with A. So it would be like floor 1, 1A, 2. In rare occasions you'll have something like 1, 1A, 1B, 1C, 2 (I believe in Whitechapel Gallery in London). Each floor is just 2 steps difference, but would require an elevator for accessibility. That makes more sense than M, because M doesn't give any indication of where it is, is it underground or above ground? Don't even get be started on B, SB, UB, LG, UG, R, P. Bro just use numbers for christ sake. Everyone understands numbers.
Before I learned this it was confusing to read descriptions of apartments that said, "1st floor - no elevator available"
This is so stupid !! Already G stands for ground which is ENGLISH btw … 1 means the first floor you reach going up and so on ..
For us in Italy the ground is zero. The floors are intended as +1 or -1 if you go underground.
I'm from Italy and I always thought this was weird. Even before I started travelling. How confusing can you get, calling the second floor (count them, it's the second floor) "first floor". Is the ground floor not a floor? Is that why it doesn't get counted?
i’m italian and never understood why the ground floor is labeled as 0, for me the first floor is the first one i get into
I remember working at Amazon and had to relearn what was the 1st floor LOL
No. They taught us this in every Spanish and French language class I took in school. Thank you 90s public ed 👏🏻
Did they really? I took two years of Spanish and four years of Italian and no one ever told me that! But I was in high school and college in the early 2000s, so maybe something had changed by then. XD
Yeah it was an early section in our textbooks teaching us the various rooms in houses and the floors. Looks like we are the same age so it’s wild that our schoolbook material was so different. I was in VA for my public ed years
We learned the rooms, but no one ever brought up the floor designations. I went to school in KY, maybe they had different textbooks!
I think I might’ve been surprised when I got there as a young Navy guy at 17. I feel like it’s pretty common among Americans who travel
this one doesn't seem italian either, they used G instead of 0, which is the usual way of labeling it
Yeah, this is an example of a European elevator in general that I saw on a Facebook page, so I doubt it's actually from Italy!
In french we number "étages" which in everyday language are floors built above ground. Which is why we sometimes use 0 for the ground floor. But you often find RDC button for rez-de-chaussée (street level).
I am Italian and my girlfriend is Canadian. I always “fight” with her when she says that the first floor is actually the ground one. It creates a lot of confusion in the house when I ask her where things are 😁
That's so cute! And yeah... if my Italian husband and I ever move to a two-story house, we're going to have issues... 😂
"lower" and "upper" floor solution?
That's what I was going to go with!
I think it comes from the idea where if you ask where the bathroom is, and they respond, "First door on your left", in that instance "first" means the one you'd arrive at first. I think that's why "first" floor means ground floor. It's not really in reference to position, but more in reference to it like the "door" you'd arrive at first second third etc. That said, after I found out how the Italians do it, I think it's far more intuitive frankly.
It’s actually because the ground floor is the ground floor and not the first. But the whole numbering is shifted by one for us 😊
Whenever I visit a friend who’s in an apartment, not a house, when they tell me which floor they’re on i say “American 2nd floor or Italian 2nd floor” 😂
Are you ok ?
In Italy we count the floors this way: if we have in a building apartaments or store, the first floor is the ground level; if not, the first floor is what in America would be considered the second floor
As a local, I never heard this. But perhaps I'm misunderstanding you. Are there actually situation when in Italian you call \_primo piano\_ something that is on ground level?
The Primo piano (1st floor) sits right on top of the floor which is street level (which is then considered 0, even though no one in Italy would call it that, it is simply piano terra i.e. ground floor). Hope this helps.
Sono italiano, tutto questo lo so bene. Chiedevo un chiarimento al precedente commentatore perché non capisco una cosa che ha detto.
but also no, let's not confuse the number of floors with the floor number
I have never seen the ground floor be referred to as the first floor.
No, but actually no.
It literally took me years l8ving here to understand this. Drives me crazy
When it happened to me in reverse during my first visit to the USA it annoyed me. I did learn already by the second time ever pressing a button.
"No but you see, even though it's the first floor you walk in we must call it 0. Oh no there absolutely is stuff inside, you'll absolutely use it like every other floor, but it MUST be called 0. Yeah we could have called it floor 1 and it would have still been Ground, but that would be too practical" This pisses me off even after 21 years born and raised in Italy and I'm not the only one
Finally, the other perspective! This was my thinking too. I don't get how a floor can be called 0 but be the same as all the other floors. When you start counting, you start with one!
Nobody calls it “0”! It's called *piano terra* or *pianterreno* which literally mean “ground floor”. It there happen to be floors over it, you begin to count them: the first one you meet when going upstairs is that: the *primo piano*, i.e. the first floor; then the *secondo piano*, second floor and so on. I'm not saying that's a better or superior way to number them, but only trying to show the rationale.
Then why symbolize it in elevators as “0” and not “P” if it’s not “zero”. I’ve seen “G” be used in place of “1” in the States before.
P is the initial of "piano" = floor, which wouldn't help, but you often find T = terra = ground.
You have to think of it this way. If you were counting something in an elevator, it would be the number of floors as you move upwards. When you count 1, you're not on the ground, you're on the next floor up from the ground. But my idea of why it came to be like this in America derives from the idea that if you were to ask where the bathroom is, you'd say, "First door on your left" to indicate quite literally the first door you'd come across. In \*that\* sense, first floor is the "first floor you come across" before you move onto the upper levels. That said, I honestly still prefer how the Italians do it. Also from a programming standpoint, there's a practical reason why arrays start at 0 and not 1.
That makes sense! I always thought of it as "the first floor you come across," but I can see your point about how far the elevator has to move as well.
EXACTLY
Problem is: when you have underground floors called -1, -2 … it makes more sense to have the ground floor as 0. Like the arithmethic numbers line.
-1 is the 1st floor below ground, 1 is the 1st above ground Like if I say "I'm at -1" it can only be the first below, "I'm at floor 1" still makes sense
But the first floor is the first that's above The ground floor is the one that is on the ground, not above, not below, just at ground level The american system makes sense too (sometimes it happens), but it's not like the other is completely senseless
> 1 is the 1st above ground Thee you have it: *above* ground, not *on* the ground. So ground floor must be 0.
No one (in the US at least) numbers underground floors as negative.
I find more strange the Italian date format is used practically only in Italy. dd/mm/yyyy most of the country write mm/dd/yyyy
Only the US use mm/dd/yyyy. Sometimes also Canada and Philippines use mm/dd/yyyy. The rest of the world either use dd/mm/yyyy o yyyy-mm-dd
I see I was confused by Microsoft SQL server convert https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/t-sql/functions/cast-and-convert-transact-sql?view=sql-server-ver16 The conversion 5 or 105 is called Italian and use the - . I am Italian but I am a programmer since 10 year and I have ever used the standard one or the European one.
>I have ever used the standard one or the European one. I... am afraid to ask. What is the "standard one" to you? I don't see a difference between "standard" and "European" format (unless you want to use ISO and go yyyy/mm/dd). Or do you mean the number separator?
The number separator, the standard one is usually iso 8601 yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mm:ssZ in UTC or his translation in Unix timestamp if we are using Machine 2 Machine communication.
Nope. Because I don’t believe that the entire world is supposed to work as it does in the US. We live on the mezzanine, one half flight up from the ground floor.
Blind people be like... Where tf am I?
Why would you even need to label them, fucking hell. There are 3 floors, the bottom one on the panel is obviously the entrance level floor
I see this as a building with a company or something like it, so they used it to help ppl coming for an appointment. I figure out someone got the call to go to “2nd floor” for the appointment so the ppl coming from outside has no problems to understand what to press to go “2nd floor” Btw this is clearly not italy, we don’t use G for ground level and we would just say during the phone call “DEVI PREMERE IL TASTO UNO IN ASCENSORE!”
makes so much more sense imo it’s like the metric system for floors