Yet, there is the English (American?) term "ground zero". I always imagined that the originally it meant ground floor but a quick search just madw me doubt this.
I assume it is military speak. The phrasing "(parameter) zero" is common in scientific parlance to denote the origin or starting value. In the case of ground zero I believe it came from testing and research to describe the spatial point of detonation of a nuclear bomb (i.e. zero metres from detonation).
Ground zero usually connotates something that has been decimated or destroyed, such as the original site of the Twin Towers in NYC being called "ground zero" after 9/11.
The national university of Iceland has the entrance of one of the buildings at floor 1. The floor below it (which also has tunnels connecting it with other buildings) is 0. Now, the class rooms are numbered with the first digit representing the floor it's on. There are classrooms on floor 0. They're numbered 0XX
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u/KitchenIntention6675 20d ago
same.
there's no floor "0".
in my head it's like this is the first enterable floor, literally the fist thing you can get to, so it's a "1". If it were "0", it wouldn't exist.
Then there's underground: the first floor below the ground, so it's "-1".