this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2024
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They don't though, they start with B1, B2, B3...
In Europe they do though. The elevators at my office have a -1 button for the floor below the ground floor.
Also, the ground floor is indicated as 0.
Yes, but I was talking about assigning numbers from a logical perspective, not a conventional one.
Also, why is it called B1 for the first basement floor but not E1 (for elevated) for the floor above ground floor?
Beats me, I think in games it's common to see 1F, 2F, 3F... (in Pokemon for example would be 1st Floor = 1F)
Americans always focus on facades, and think about buildings as commodities. The logic is that in the American conception, each floor is a floor-to-ceiling architectural layer, as viewed from the front of a building. So you think:
B2 - Second layer below visibility B1 - First layer below visibility 1 - First visible layer 2 - Second visible layer 3 - Third visible layer
"How many layers am I paying for, when I buy this building? Sir, If you buy 7 layers at this low, low price. I will throw in an 8th layer for free!" "OMG did you hear Frank's new house has 4 layers! Frank has way more status than Bob and his paltry two layer building."
Whereas in most countries, the conception is that a floor is each literal floor you pass as you go up or down while traveling inside a building.
-2 - I've descended two floors -1 - I've descended one floor 0 - I haven't gone up or down since I entered this building 1 - I've ascended one floor 2 - I've ascended two floors
The American way is still thinking of a floor as the thing you stand on. We call the first floor that you step on in the building the "first floor" and going up we call the second floor you stand on the "second floor". Going down to the basement, we call it B1 because its the first floor you step on in the basement amd so on going down.
Europeans call the first floor that you step on the "ground floor" and the second floor that you stand on the "first floor". Going down, the first floor you hit underground is called "-1 and so on, very similarly to the American system. The naming of floors aboveground doesn't make logical sense to me, as they should be named for ease of navigation. ~~Telling someone that they need to go up 3 floors and then turn left on the 2nd floor hallway is inherently confusing. ~~
Edit: sorry got that example mixed up.
If you're building a house I'm Europe and the ask how many floors to build and you say "2". Are they going to build the floor that sits on the ground and one more or are they going to build the floor that sits on the ground and two more? The naming system lends itself to confusion.
I'm an American that lives in Italy about half of the time. I was being facetious a bit, but it is true that there is a cultural differences in how people think about this, it's not just words. Someone else commented on the German words for it, which (as is typical with German over Romantic languages) is more appropriately descriptive.
"Go up 3 floors and turn left." in the US would put you on the fourth floor, but in Europe each floor you go up is the number of the floor you are on. It's more common in the US to say "Go up to the 2nd floor." unless you're not starting on the 1st floor.
In Europe if you say "I want a building with 7 floors." no one will be confused, they will know that you want a ground floor and 7 above ground floors. They would probably also know what an American means when they say it. Only the Americans would be confused and they hilariously are as they look for their AirBnB's here on vacation!
Probably for the same reason we write -1 for the first integer below zero, but 1 instead of +1 for the first one above.
It might be more consistent to write more, but we're lazy and everyone knows what it means.
Don't you see how that's such an obviously ugly and mathematically unsatisfying retrofit to make your shit work?
B2 B1 1 2 3
vs
-2 -1 0 1 2
And what the hell do you even do in a situation where 0 is at street level but -1 opens on a backyard or something. It's clearly not a basement, but it's clearly not the ground floor either.
Or do you never build an elevator in such buildings in order not to trigger massive cognitive dissonance?
EDIT: Holy shit there is another layer to this hypocrisy cake. Americans swear up and down that they have to write "12/11" because they say "12th of September", but their floor notation is literally "B1" for "First Basement". Clearly the only rule they follow is that they'll do whatever is least logical and convenient just to piss off everyone who is forced to work with them.
Main entrance determines the position of the ground floor. If your basement leads to a backyard that leads to another street, it's just a basement access.
Unless you declare the basement entrance to be the main entrance, then the initial ground level entrance is not on the ground floor anymore. So it's pretty much up to your discretion how you handle it.
In some buildings the backyard level has windows though. It's clearly not a basement, just a (partially or mostly) above-ground floor that happens not to be at street level.
Furthermore French for "ground floor" literally translates to "street level" so going by linguistics we can't declare any other level to be the ground floor to make whatever "B1" is work consistently.
It's fairly common to have G for ground, and LG for lower ground. Then B1 for the first basement level and 2 for the floor above ground.
I've been in an elevator that had -0.5, 0, 0.5, 1, 1.5, 2,, where each half floor opened the doors on the opposite side literally half a story up