International English the sphere of influence of English-speaking countries. Here English may serve as a useful lingua franca between ethnic and language groups. Higher education, the legislature and judiciary, national commerce, and so on, may all be carried out predominantly in English. The "expanding circle" refers to those countries where English has no official role, but is nonetheless important for certain functions, e.g. international business and tourism. By the twenty-first century, non-native English speakers have come to outnumber native speakers by a factor of three, according to the British Council. Darius Degher, a professor at Malmö University in Sweden, uses the term
Sambo (racial term) Sambo (racial term) Sambo is a term for a person with African heritage and, in some countries, also mixed with Native American heritage (see "zambo"). Formerly, it had the technical meaning of a person having a mixture of black and white ancestry, more black than white—contrast with mulatto, quadroon, octoroon, etc. in modern US English and British English. The word "sambo" came into the English language from the Latin American Spanish word "zambo", the Spanish word in Latin America for a person of mixed African and Native American descent. This in turn may have come from one of three African