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this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2024
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We use the same thing in Australia as the British and if someone told me they have a 2 story home I would think ground floor and first floor
But if they said "my bedroom is on the 2nd floor" what would you think?
Then we would think it's a three-storey building. Really don't see the issue with calling the ground level what it is. The ground floor is zero levels above the ground. The first floor is one level above the ground. Think of it like this: how many flights of stairs does it take to get to that floor?
Example: my local hospital lists a ward I visited as being on the second floor, therefore you go up two flights of stairs to get to it.
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.
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.
Your house probably had a loft extension to add another floor, or you live in one of those tall townhouses that are three stories so they can fit more over priced new builds onto a tiny estate with no parking.
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Hey! Common ground.
Wait til you find out what language they speak...
British English and something as unintelligible as Austrian German, but it's called Australian English.