I didn’t know they used 0-indexed buildings in ingerland
Hot tip in the US. In an elevator the floor with the star is the ground floor, regardless of what number is present. This helps clarify any confusion between systems and also is clear for locations that have floors below the ground floor (I’ve most commonly seen this with parking structures)
Zero-indexed versus one-indexed. You all know which is the right one
I like ground being 0. That way you have a continuous number line from basement to the top:
-2 -1 0 1 2 3 4 5
I feel like the British way should always be phrased like “first floor up” or “third floor up” because then you count starting at zero. American way should be phrased as “the first floor” or “the fourth floor.”
Funny how their first isn’t first.
As some one outside both countries 1 2 3 4 5 is where it’s at. The second floor being the first makes no sense.
Erdgeschoss, same here.
True, but also 1. Obergeschoss, 2. Obergeschoss etc.
In German there was the “ground-floor, the upper-floor and the roof-floor”, which then got separated into "ground floor, upper floor 1, upper floor 2… "
I live under the British system (Australia) of floor naming.
So annoying.
This is where it’s a benefit to live in a hilly area. For a building on a hill, it’s quite normal to enter on a different floor depending on whether you’re on an uphill side or downhill side. The main entrance to my son’s dorm is the third floor
I just assume the Brits are on a hill or slightly tilted
Ok so I need some clarification. Building has a crawlspace so there are a few steps up to the front door (please don’t tell me the front has some weird name too), so the entrance level isn’t necessarily the ground level what do you do?
Option 2 the building is built on uneven ground so the front entrance is ground level but the back entrance is on the floor below the entrance level. How do you number that?
For simplicity sake front refers to street view side and back is the opposite of front.
Same thing in Spain
do Brits skip 13?
The simple difference between ordinal and cardinal numbering.
Both are ordinal. One just start with 0 and the other with 1.
Americans use cardinal numbering for floors. How many you got? One, two, three. Europeans use ordinal numbering. They start at the ground (0) and count up from there.
Cardinal refers to number, while ordinal refers to sequence. Both American & British systems are ordinal, since changing the order of the floor numbers would make no sense. If they were cardinal, the order would be irrelevant.
Personally, I prefer the American system, since the bottom floor is what you enter on, and is therefore the first floor you interact with.
You’re wrong about that, cardinal numbers are still ordered. You can’t have Charles the Third come before Charles the Second (but there is no Charles the Zeroth).
It depends on the convention whether enumerating starts with the zeroth or first. In programming for example indices commonly start at zero. And the numbering of floors is another example of where starting at zero is quite common.
Cardinal numbers refer to the size of a set. (10 apples in a basket) Ordinal numbers refer to the order of elements in a set (third apple put into the basket) you can rearrange an ordered set and retain the same cardinality (ten apples in the basket) but you’d change the order of the elements (switch the third and sixth apple).
The floor number you’re on is an ordinal number. You can rearrange the elements while retaining the cardinality of the set, (the total number of floors does not change) but the order of the set is changed (the third floor is switched with the sixth floor).
Hope that clears up the confusion. Have a nice day.
Cardinal numerals refer to amount (one, two, three) and ordinal refers to a position in a sequence (first, second, third). So your example is ordinal not cardinal.
In Hungary, we also have a base floor depending on the building, as some are built on a mountain side.
American: we do use the term ground floor, but we would never say first floor when referring to the second floor…
