On Wed, 18 Aug 2010 16:56:22 -0400, AK wrote: > Contrast this with _one_ example that was repeated in this thread of > there being ground floor, 1st floor, 2nd, and so on. However! Consider > that ground floor is kind of different from the other floors. It's the > floor that's not built up over ground, but is already there -- in case > of the most primitive dwelling, you can put some sawdust over the > ground, put a few boards overhead and it's a "home", although probably > not a "house". But does it really have what can be officially called a > "floor"?
That's the perfect example, although perhaps for an [apparently] unintended reason <g>: I think that the notion of a qualitatively different "ground floor" is European, or at least that's the way I remember it from my high school French class way back in the late 1970s. In the U.S., when you walk into a building (even a very tall commercial building), that's the first floor, and when you go up a level, that's the second floor, and all the room/suite/office numbers are two hundred and something. I also seem to recall that some European buildings have a mezzanine floor between the ground floor and the floor whose reference number is 1, but again, high school was a long time ago. Dan -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
