Well I guess that would just depend on how you define “know some English”. Knowing a few common phrases wouldn’t qualify as “knows some English”, IMO. I can count to 10 in Spanish, as well as a few individual words. I know “some” Spanish, technically. But would I actually be able to communicate to anyone if Spanish was the only language they knew? Probably not.
I probably have a similar knowledge of Spanish as you but after working with some Spanish people and having some Spanish students, I could get the jest of what they were talking about.
However, me writing an essay in Spanish would not happen. It would be similar with many Spanish people and their understanding of English.
In other words, enough to get by but not enough to be considered even semi-fluent
The per-capita GDP in Russia is higher than any country in Latin America, and way more than double Latin America as a whole. So how do you include Mexico and most of South America, but exclude Russia?
Also, it’s very difficult in either Russia or Latin America to find anyone who has any working knowledge of English.
Make up your mind! Does “Western society” mean the USA, or everywhere that’s not the third world?
It makes a difference. I grew up in Western Europe and live in Australia now, and your assumption no 3, that everyone over 18 is a licensed driver with an operational vehicle, is certainly not true in either place. If you substituted age 23 or 25 you might be closer to the mark.
I’d add it’s assumed everyone can read and write at a 5th grade or higher level. They can handle very basic arithmetic.
It’s pretty rare these days to find someone totally illiterate.
It’s difficult (maybe impossible?) to use the Net without some level of literacy.
If you could do this, then your knowledge of Spanish exceeds mine by a not-so-small amount. I mean, about all I could do as far as engaging with Spanish speakers would be to join in singing the “1,2,3,4,5,6…” song. If I happened upon such a group of interesting people. 
Really:confused:
I had students attending my classes from both Russia and Multiple Latin America countries.
Everyone of them could read and write English (Mind you, it was required before coming to class). In all fairness, they were more comfortable in their own language.
Whether this applies universally in their own country, I doubt it, but in my travels, I could usually find some one who could speak English but in all fairness I have never been to Russia (Poland was the closest) and even there I could get with English ( of course, having a Polish guy with who could speak English was a great help)
Interesting:)
Australia being a country similar in size to USA (lower 48 states) or Canada, outside of the major centers (Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Perth) I would think having a license and vehicle would be essential.
Although, I certainly agree that the typical age of getting a license has increased from 18 to say 21 on the average.
Having a licence is essential in Brisbane as well; public transport is terrible and expensive here.
Basically, I’d be surprised if anyone over 18 from any part of Australia didn’t have a driver’s licence and my first assumption on hearing they didn’t would be that it was because the police had taken it off them for doing something silly behind the wheel a lot.
Well, practically the entire population lives in the major centres; Australia is highly urbanised (certainly more so than the USA).
My quibble was more with the “. . . has an operational vehicle” bit of the claim. There are plenty of 18-year old (and a bit older) Australians who have a driving licence but who don’t own a car; they’re dependent on the loan of cars belonging to, and whose primary users are, parents or friends.
There’s nothing odd about not owning a car - lots of people here don’t, for various reasons - but it’s still expected an adult has a driver’s licence anyway.
Excellent comment.
I got my license at 16 and had a beater car at 18 but I still rode my bike or took the bus to university and only used this older beater car for recreation or driving to a job.
By 21, I was driving or biking full time and rarely used public transit.
FYI, I grew up in Edmonton, Canada and currently live in Fort Worth, Texas
In Australia at any rate, the majority of adults do have a licence, though if you break it down by age cohort you don’t hit 90% of adults having a licence until about age 29, and 95% until the mid-30s. (At the other end, licenceholding starts to fall off from the late 60s, and by about the mid-80s about 50% of surviving adults do not have a licence.) These figures vary slightly from state to state. Source.
Particularly in the younger age groups, you’d expect the proportion either owning a car or being the primary use of a car owned by somebody else to be lower than licenceholding rates to a non-trivial extent, but I don’t have figures on that. Personal impressions, however, are that it’s not at all uncommon for a young adult still living with parents, or living with other young adults in a shared home in an urban environment, not to have a car which they can think of as “theirs”.
I started learning to drive when I was 13, drove myself (illegally) at 14, got my full drivers license on my 15th birthday and my own new pickup truck just shy of my 16th birthday. I wasn’t spoiled at all. I had to work my ass off for it and pay for it myself but I grew up in rural Louisiana where not having a vehicle at your disposal was the equivalent of having severe disability.
I wouldn’t ever be able to leave our very large property if I couldn’t drive because my parents were rarely home. Forget about public transportation. That just meant someone volunteered to take you on an ATV ride across miles of land.
I get irritated when threads like this get so urban-centric. Not everyone lives in the Bos-Wash corridor. The vast majority of the U.S. by geography is very rural from the Maine coast to Wyoming and Alaska. You have to get off your ass and learn to do things yourself unless you want to wait for the bus that never comes.
OTOH, the vast majority of the U.S. that is rural is also completely awesome. You can do whatever you want and meet some great people for low prices. They can fix just about anything and they know how to drive. That is something that eludes many of the elite Bostonian and Rhode Islanders that I work with today.
some bold assumptions there!
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It is assumed that everyone has a cell phone of some type.
just in the us smartphone ownership is 77%
http://www.pewinternet.org/fact-sheet/mobile/ -
It is assumed that everyone has access to the internet and is available on short notice if they are online.
in the us, home internet connectivity is74%
https://www.census.gov/history/pdf/2013computeruse.pdf -
It is assumed that most people have a driver’s license and an operational vehicle and can drive reasonably well.
just in us DL percentage is 85%
Office of Highway Policy Information - Policy | Federal Highway Administration -
Everyone has a credit/debit account of some sort.
just in us 66% of individuals and 78% of households have creditcards
Number of U.S. Facebook users by age 2018 | Statista -
Everyone knows basic English (even in non English speaking countries)
worldwide english knowledge is 25% (just under 50% in the countries you name
https://www.reference.com/world-view/percentage-world-speaks-english-859e211be5634567# -
Everyone has some sort of a facebook/Twitter/Instagram/snapchat account.
in just us facebook percent is well under 50%
Number of U.S. Facebook users by age 2018 | Statista
Anymore assumptions? yeah thats my question too!
mc
In a thread devoted to the expectations of “Western Society”, a focus on the vast majority of the US is just as parochial as a focus on the Bos-Wash corridor. The truth is there are significant groups within western society where the possession of your own vehicle is normative for everyone over 18, and significant groups where it is not. Given that the division here is partly an urban/rural one, and that urban groups tend for obvious reasons to be more populous, it’s probably true that for a majority of adults in western society, universal car ownership from age 18 is not normative.
But, actually, that doesn’t matter. Whether they’re a majority in population terms or a materially significant minority, I don’t think we can say that universal car ownership from age 18 is an expectation of western society, though it may be an expectation of relatively prosperous rural communities within western society.
yes, that was my point, too. while some of those statistics are high, they in no way indicate that **all ** adults have or even want these things. not to mention the socio-economic and cultural breakdown of those statistics,
mc
Here are the figures I found for France (I just picked the first figure I found, I don’t vouch for their accuracy).
92%
81%
83% for the driving license. 83% of households have at least one car.
88%
40% , so wrong assumption.
49%, so wrong assumption.
Add me to the list of people who, since the second indicates you’re not thinking only of the US (and maybe Canada), feels the need to correct the first. There are many countries where it is not assumed that people under their mid-20s own a car or have a license (and many college students have a license but no car); for people living in urban areas with good public transportation, there is no assumption of either one for any age.
But then, in much of Western Europe you can’t get a driving license for a car until 18. There are large swathes of America where that would be very impractical. I’m going to guess driving age in Australia may also be on the earlier side.
OOT: checked the Australian guess and it varies by state, between 16 and 18, which makes it equal to or younger than most Western European countries.