As a language learner, one thing I often crave is a good message board to read, because it seems that they strike a nice balance between the formality of literary language and the difficult colloquialness of spontaneous speech, and what’s more, they offer interactivity. I know if I was trying to learn English and stumbled across the SDMB I’d probably pass out from happiness. I was thinking maybe we could compile a list of some good message boards conducted in other languages; they could be large or small-- anything is fine as long as they’re fairly interesting. Any language will do…I’m sure some Doper is learning it. So have at! 
I’m particularly hoping to get some interesting replies from non-native-English-speaking dopers.
Good idea. I know of some Dopers who had quite a rudimentary grasp of English at the beginning of their tenure, whose skills improved drastically while posting and reading here. I believe Aldebaran was one.
I’m going to interject myself in here to ask that posters please do not quote content from any foreign language message boards they may suggest. We ask that all posts be in English, per post #15 in the FAQ. Thank you.
Whoops, sorry if my topic precipitated that.
Well, it did. But that’s fine - don’t worry about it. I just would like it if nothing gets posted here that I don’t know what is being said.
I’ve been browsing this board in Chinese today… it’s a rather big board about pets.
Mind you, I know absolutely no Chinese but it’s interesting to look. I can still see extremely cute pictures.
You might try www.unitedplanet.org/forum/ etc for various languages and www.quepasa.com for Spanish.
May we provide a translation?
I wouldn’t mind finding something like the SDMB in French–I want to seriously improve my French skills. A board with an SDMB-like tradition of intellectual liberty and rigour, with a culture tolerant of second-language speakers, and which would help them learn, would be a great thing.
I was going to post a link to gxangalo.com for the Esperanto-speakers among us, but it appears that they have chat rooms and blogs, but not a message board like this one. Pity. Seems it would be the perfect mix of the two.
You mean some of the original text and a translation? I’m inclined to say no, but if you can justify it, you could change my mind. What purpose would it serve that a simple link wouldn’t?
Interesting stuff so far, y’all.
I’m going to bump this before it disappears, because I too would like to find some foreign language message boards (particularly in German, Italian, and Spanish). I don’t know any myself, but I’ll look around and let you know if I find one.
Would it be considered improper to top this thread? I was extremely interested in finding out people’s responses, and I think the thread may have just been around at the wrong time. I think it still has the potential to yield interesting and helpful output.
There’s http://www.forodeespanol.com/. It’s really oriented for English speakers looking to learn Spanish, but there seems to be some decent Spanish language discussion going on, at least from the POV of a not-very-good Spanish speaker, like myself.
My website at http://www.metrodemontreal.com/ has a forum which is in French, but it’s pretty much geared towards transit enthusiasts.
Swedish forum for discussing music:
www.dagensskiva.com/discuss.asp?
And its sister forum, for discussing litterature:
I give you Big Boards.
I discovered this website via the SDMB, so I’m surprised it hasan’t been mentioned yet. The link is to their list of the largest message boards on the internet. Their criterion for size is the number of posts, which isn’t necessarily the best but it’ll do. Just from the top 200 here are what I think are the most promising general discussion foreign-language boards (note: the extent of my experience with each of these was a quick check to make sure it was work-safe):
fok.nl (Dutch)
PinoyExchange (mixed English and Filipino, mostly English)
Transact.no (Norwegian)
Index.hr (Croatian)
Kafegaul (Indonesian) Note: Big Boards link to this site is broken, but this one works.
Cofe.ru (Russian)
Flashback (looks like Swedish to me)
Forum TR (Turkish)
There are a number of other foreign language specialty boards, but most of them have general discussion or off-topic forums. Here’s a list of some other languages available with a handful of examples:
Italian:
Gamesradar.it (video games, with lots of off-topic)
Hebrew:
Chiquititas (according to Big Boards, this is a Hebrew forum for an Argentinian soap opera 
. I can’t read it so I can’t confirm or tell how much off-topic is available. Also note the Big Boards link to this is dead but this one works.)
Portuguese (Brazilian):
HardMob (PC gaming, with a little off-topic) Note: link from Big Boards is dead, but this one works.
German:
IOFF.de (television and off-topic)
French:
Hardware.fr (computer hardware, with some off-topic)
Spanish:
Forocoches (cars, with some off-topic)
Chinese:
IM286 (web design and programming, with some off-topic)
Et8 (technology, with off-topic)
Hungarian:
Prohardver (computers and hardware, looks like very little off-topic)
Sure, but it’s a provocative pick. The site and forum is very left-wing and also drug liberal. I still prefer the two I linked two by a huge margin.
Wow. That’s the kind of listing I was looking for…
Thanks for the info. I hadn’t looked into any of those enough to get a really good feel for them, so input from anyone who actually knows what they’re talking about is welcome :).