Just Post

673 readers

22 users here now

Just post something 💛

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

643

This is a bigger culture shock than the metric vs imperial system to me. (lemmy.world)

submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

316 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

I think of the first literal floor at the bottom of the building as the first floor, because it's the first floor I see and touch when entering the building. Then when I go up 1 staircase, I encounter the second floor I have seen in that building, so I think of it as the second floor. 1 floor + 1 flight of stairs = 2 total floors, and I'm now standing on the second of those 2.

Saying ground floor feels weird to me because it's not associated with a number, it's a G, when every other floor of the building is associated with a number. I've never used G to represent 1 or 0 in any other context.

It's literally just two correct but different ways of looking at something and we can talk in circles about it all day. If I had grown up outside of the US, I'm sure calling the first floor the ground floor would make more sense to me.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

Growing up in a "ground floor" country, the British way feels very natural to me. Which floor do I first encounter when I climb up the stairs? The first one! I guess you can also think of the ground floor as its own thing, since it is unelevated.