this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2024
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I did a quick search, it seems it's similar to imperial and metric in that it's only the US doing 1st floor as ground floor. It's for various reasons, but in most European languages the word used for the numbered "floors" either means "horizontal division between floors" or the first "construction over the previous floor", so it makes sense that the first is the first above the ground.
It's like the basement, the ground floor is special.
Rez-de-chaussée is the ground floor in France. Go one level up and you're on premier étage, a.k.a first floor.
In sweden första våningen, a.k.a first floor, is the entry level of the building.
I actually found this map for it, it's apparently divided between the world pretty evenly.
I mentioned elsewhere that some stuff is lost in translation here: In Norwegian we don't say "I'm on the first floor", we either say "I'm in the first storey" or "I'm on the ground-level". For subsequent floors we use "I'm in X storey". I don't know how this works in other languages, but it would be strange if Norwegian was the only language where we use the storey to specify where something is, rather than the floor (i.e. using "in" rather than "on").
Well Sweden is wrong already :-)