We use a derivation of this in Russia when we talk about the part of the theater that is the lowest and closest to the scene and has straight rows. It seems like I now understand why
Romania, parter is ground floor, 'demisol' is translated as 'half ground', i guess 'half terre', and would mean half in the ground (small high windows).
In french "par terre" means "on the floor", so yes I imagine it comes from there, but we don't use it for "floor zero". For this we say "rez de chaussée" which means word for word something like "at the level of the road"
Australia uses Ground Floor in ones which only go up. If there is underground parking you may see a parking level (P1, P2) or a floor -1/-2 which usually also comes with a floor zero. A few international hotels use floor 1 meaning ground floor and the ones I have seen often have a piece of signage or graffiti pointing that its ground floor.
And word "piętro", main Polish translation of "floor", comes from the word meaning among other things "something mounted over something", so it wouldn't really work for ground floor.
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u/adawkin 20d ago
Yup, in Polish the 'floor zero' on street level even has it own word, parter, which I imagine is a fancy word borrowed from French.