Women’s History Month isn’t just about looking back. It’s about looking at who’s winning right now, and asking why some people are determined to silence the languages that got them here.
Let’s start with the obvious irony: the same year the United States signed an executive order designating English as its official language, America’s most decorated female athletes were busy speaking five of them.
In March 2025, President Trump signed Executive Order 14224, declaring English the official language of the U.S. It also revoked Clinton-era protections that required federal agencies to provide language access to non-English speakers. Supporters called it unifying. Critics called it what it is: a message to millions of Americans that their languages, and by extension, their cultures are inconvenient.
We’d like to offer a rebuttal. And it comes courtesy of some of the most incredible women in sports today.
They all speak English. They also speak everything else. That’s not a problem. That’s a superpower.
Serena Williams | English · French · Italian · German · Mandarin
TENNIS LEGEND · 23 GRAND SLAM SINGLES TITLES · 4 OLYMPIC GOLD MEDALS
Serena Williams didn’t just change tennis. She changed what it means to be an American athlete on the world stage.
Raised in Compton, California, Serena made it her mission to meet the world on its own terms. She learned French specifically because she wanted to win the French Open and give her victory speech in the language of the country. She did both — three times.
Similarly, she learned Italian because she loved the culture. Her 2016 Italian Open victory speech was delivered entirely in Italian. She now owns an apartment in Paris and is teaching her daughters French.
In her own words: when she spoke French to an African athlete in the Olympic Village, he stopped and said, “But you’re American. No Americans speak other languages.” Serena Williams proved that wrong.
Five languages. Five. And she still found time to win 23 Grand Slams. Someone should tell Washington.
Coco Gauff | English · French (in progress) · Spanish (in progress)
TENNIS STAR · 2023 US OPEN CHAMPION · 2025 FRENCH OPEN CHAMPION
Coco Gauff is 21 years old, a two-time Grand Slam champion, a TIME Women of the Year honoree, and she’s on a 26-day Duolingo streak learning French. That last detail? It’s the most Coco thing imaginable.
She grew up with Serena and Venus Williams as her role models. Meanwhile, her grandmother was the first Black woman to integrate Delray Beach schools in Florida. By the time she was a teenager, she was already greeting fans in Montreal in both English and French.
When she won the 2025 Roland Garros title, she told reporters she had fully intended to give part of her speech in French — and is already planning her next opportunity to do it right.
Her coaching team includes a Spanish coach and a French fitness coach. As a result, Coco is surrounded by languages every single day, learning from each of them. That’s not accidental. That’s intentional.
Coco Gauff on French: “I have my longest streak on Duolingo today, which is only 26 days. I’m really trying.” Honestly? Same energy that won her the US Open.
Julie Chu | English · French · Cantonese (heritage)
ICE HOCKEY · FIRST ASIAN AMERICAN WOMAN ON THE US OLYMPIC HOCKEY TEAM · 4-TIME OLYMPIAN
Before we talk about the 2026 gold, we need to talk about the woman who blazed the trail.
Julie Chu was born in Fairfield, Connecticut. Her father emigrated from Guangzhou, China via Hong Kong; her mother is Chinese and Puerto Rican. She became the first Asian American woman to play for the U.S. Olympic ice hockey team, competed in four Olympics, and is one of the most decorated American female Winter Olympians of all time.
When she moved to Montreal to coach at Concordia University, she immediately enrolled in French classes. As she put it, it was important to integrate herself into the culture, not just live in it. She learned the language, then married Canadian hockey legend Caroline Ouellette, a rival she’d faced in three Olympic gold medal finals. Eventually, she became a permanent resident of Canada.
Julie Chu is the very definition of a Third Culture Kid (TCK): navigating Chinese heritage, Puerto Rican roots, American identity, and now a French Canadian life. If you haven’t heard our Translate This! episode on TCKs, this is your sign.
A Chinese-Puerto Rican girl from Connecticut who learned French in Montreal and married her greatest rival. Julie Chu contains multitudes. That’s a flex.
Team USA Women’s Hockey | The 2026 Olympic Gold
MILANO CORTINA 2026 · GOLD MEDALISTS · MULTICULTURAL CHAMPIONS
In February 2026, the U.S. Women’s Olympic Hockey Team won gold in Milan, defeating Canada 2-1 in overtime. It became one of the most celebrated moments in American women’s sports history. Megan Keller scored the overtime winner. Captain Hilary Knight carried the team into the Closing Ceremony with a gold medal around her neck — and 15 career Olympic goals, the most of any U.S. hockey player, male or female.
And then? The White House invited the men’s team. Trump made a joke about the women. The women’s team declined the invitation and instead accepted a celebration offer from rapper Flavor Flav in Las Vegas. Their response was perfect and very on brand.
What’s less talked about: this team, like every Olympic team, is built on diversity. For instance, Laila Edwards became the first Black woman to play for the U.S. team just three years ago. The Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL) features players from across the globe. These athletes live international, multilingual lives every season.
This team carries the legacy of Julie Chu every time they lace up. Gold medals. A presidential joke. A Vegas party with Flavor Flav. Priorities intact.
Suni Lee | English · Hmong (heritage)
GYMNASTICS · 2020 OLYMPIC ALL-AROUND GOLD MEDALIST · FIRST HMONG AMERICAN OLYMPIAN
Suni Lee’s parents fled Laos as children during the Vietnam War. They made it to Saint Paul, Minnesota, where they built a life in the largest urban Hmong community in the United States.
Their daughter became the first Hmong American Olympian. She won gold in Tokyo and bronze in Paris. Moreover, she overcame a kidney disease diagnosis midway through her career to come back and win the ESPY for Best Comeback Athlete.
At a press conference after Tokyo, a Hmong reporter asked her a question in Hmong. Suni laughed, admitted she couldn’t really speak it well, and then said , with the most American accent imaginable: ‘Hello, my name is Sunisa Lee’ in Hmong.
The Hmong American community lit up. Not because she was fluent. Because she tried. Because she honored the language even in its fragility.
Heritage languages, and the grief of losing them is a real, deeply felt experience for millions of second-generation Americans. Suni Lee put that truth on an Olympic stage without apology. That’s its own kind of win.
She couldn’t say much in Hmong. What she said was enough. The language of belonging doesn’t require fluency.
Naomi Girma | English · Amharic (heritage)
SOCCER · 2024 OLYMPIC GOLD MEDALIST · STANFORD COMPUTATIONAL LINGUISTICS GRADUATE
Naomi Girma’s father fled Ethiopia as a teenager during the Red Terror civil war that killed more than a million people. He arrived in the U.S. as a refugee, worked as a busboy and dishwasher, put himself through school, and became an electrical engineer.
Her mother came to the U.S. to study and stayed after graduating. As a result, Naomi grew up in San Jose with a story that is entirely American and entirely immigrant.
She went to Stanford and graduated with a degree in computational linguistics. She then became one of the most celebrated defenders in women’s soccer. Computational linguistics is the scientific study of language and its relationship to human cognition and computation.
In a time when AI is threatening to replace human language professionals, Naomi Girma is literally trained in the science that proves why human language understanding matters. She is, arguably, the most language-aware elite athlete in the country.
A refugee’s daughter who studies the science of language. Wins Olympic gold. And people want to debate whether English should be our only official language?
The TCK Factor: When You Belong Everywhere and Nowhere
THIRD CULTURE KIDS IN AMERICAN SPORTS
If you’ve listened to our Translate This! podcast episode on Third Culture Kids (TCKs), you know the profile: someone who has grown up navigating multiple cultures — often across country lines or within immigrant households — and who develops a singular kind of adaptability, empathy, and cultural intelligence.
Every athlete in this piece carries some version of that experience. For example, Julie Chu navigated Chinese, Puerto Rican, and American identities from birth, then added French Canadian to the mix. Meanwhile, Naomi Girma grew up between Ethiopian culture at home and American culture at school. Similarly, Suni Lee straddled a tight-knit Hmong refugee community in Minnesota and the intensely American world of elite gymnastics.
Coco Gauff learned early that to reach global audiences, you meet people in their language.
TCKs don’t always have passports from multiple countries. Sometimes the border is the dinner table. Nevertheless, what they build on either side of it, the ability to read a room, connect across difference, translate not just words but worldviews is exactly what makes them exceptional competitors and even more exceptional humans.
Want to understand TCKs on a deeper level? Listen to our Translate This! episode on Third Culture Kids. Listen Here.
A Word on English-Only Legislation
LET’S BE DIRECT.
Here’s what’s actually true: every athlete in this piece speaks English. Fluently. Publicly. They give speeches, interviews, and press conferences in English every day. English is their language of commerce, competition, and community.
However, their multilingualism isn’t a threat to that. It’s an addition to it. Serena Williams speaking French to a stunned athlete in the Olympic Village expanded what people believe Americans are capable of. Coco Gauff greeting Montreal fans in both official languages of Canada made fans for life. Naomi Girma studying the science of language at Stanford gave her tools to understand human connection at a level most of us never reach.
The executive order signed in March 2025 is largely symbolic. Legally, it can’t override the rights of language minorities in courts, healthcare, or emergency services without an act of Congress. Nevertheless, symbols matter. Revoking the Clinton-era protections that helped limited English proficiency communities access federal services is not symbolic. That’s a real-world impact on real people.
More than 17% of Team USA at the 2026 Winter Olympics had direct immigrant ties. Furthermore, nearly every gold medal story in recent memory carries a language inside it, Hmong, Amharic, Cantonese, French. That’s not a problem to be solved. That’s the country working as designed.
English unites us. But multilingualism elevates us. The two are not in competition. Ask Serena. She speaks both.
The Takeaway
This Women’s History Month, we’re celebrating the women who play hard, win big, and refuse to leave any part of themselves at the border. They speak English. They also speak the world. And in an industry built on communication, at Barbier, we’d say that’s the whole point.
Language is not a barrier. It’s a bridge. And these women have been building them for years.
Be Better. Be Barbier.