[ColinWright]

You need to be careful about this ... I believe that in France (for example) zero is regarded as both positive and negative. So in France:

Non-negative integers: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, ...

Positive integers: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, ...

Similarly, for some countries "Whole Numbers" is equivalent to all the integers, while in other countries it's the set { 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, ... } while in still other countries it's { 1, 2, 3, 4, ... }

There is no approach that uses "natural language" and is universal, and being aware of this is both frustrating and useful. Whether it is important is up to the individual.

[thaumasiotes]

> I believe that in France (for example) zero is regarded as both positive and negative.

That would cause all kinds of problems, so I'd be pretty surprised if it turned out to be true.

I note that this is the heading of the relevant wikipedia page:

> Un nombre négatif est un nombre réel qui est inférieur à zéro, comme −3 ou −π.

( https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nombre_n%C3%A9gatif )

It'd be hard to be more explicit that zéro is not a negative number.

[ColinWright]

If you're going to quote wikipedia:

> "Zéro est le seul nombre qui est à la fois réel, positif, négatif et imaginaire pur."

From: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z%C3%A9ro#Propri.C3.A9t.C3.A9s...

It's hard to be more explicit that it is considered both.

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Added in edit

In speaking with a French colleague, he says that "inférieur" often means "less-than-or-equal-to" rather than "strictly-less-than", so the passage you quote would still imply that 0 is negative (and most likely also positive).

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Second edit:

> In France, "positive" means "supérieur à 0", and "supérieur à " means "greater than or equal to". Similarly, "négative" means "inférieur à 0", that is "less than or equal to 0".

> (We have the similar reaction towards the anglosaxon world and the introduction of nonnegative…)

-- https://mathstodon.xyz/@antoinechambertloir/1153275891164575...

[dooglius]

Presumably, GP only worked on the problems in English and someone else would translate it appropriately.