"He who does not know foreign languages does not know anything about his own."
The Top 10 Language Learning Forums
When learning a foreign language, it is always best to have access to as many different forms of learning and immersion as possible to keep your interest high and your learning varied. It is also extremely useful to be able to ask questions when you don't understand something. This is sometimes difficult when learning a language at home alone—but it does not have to be. Joining a forum allows you to be part of a community with enough combined knowledge, expertise, and enthusiam to guide you along your language learning journey.
Forums encourage members to ask questions, seek advice,voice opinions, or invoke discussions of their chosen topic.
Language learning forums are no different, and can provide the help and support that are often missing for the home based student. Many of the members will have been through the language learning process themselves; many will already speak your target language and will be able to help with pronunciation, translation or phonetics. They are also fantastic sources of information on where to find new language learning materials or resources. They are of course also completely free and only require a minimal amount of information to join so I would suggest joining as many as possible and become an active member of each. They can offer a very rewarding experience.
There are actually not that many quality forums that deal with general language learning. There are plenty of language specific forums which I would suggest you find for your chosen language, but I wanted to show only the general forums that deal with language learning in a broader sense and for more than one language.
Here then, is my list of the Top 10 Language learning forums
The Top 10 Language Learning Forums
1) Unilang.com
A broad spectrum of language topics with many members and an excellent design and pleasing layout. What really puts this forum above the rest is the number of subforums it has for individual languages. It has over 70 different languages at the moment, each with its own active forum. If you can't find help for your language here I don't know where you will.
2) How-to-learn-Any-Language.com
A huge language learning site with a massive language learning forum. This site is the number one in the Google searches for a reason: Probably the most popular language forum around, and although the user interface can seem a little daunting to begin with, it holds an enormous amount of information and should be joined by any one serious about learning a language
3) Omniglot
The leader in language learning sites with an impressive and rapidly growing forum to accompany it. Omniglot caters for all language learning interests from the mundane to the seriously obscure and boasts some very knowledgeable members and some very intellectual discussions. A nice subforum on extinct languages is an example of some of the interesting things you can find at Omniglot, and their writing systems forum is second to none. Another must join.
4) Phrasebase
A forum with a lot of members and, as with Unilang, an impressive amount of subforums for each language. The layout however is not as easy to use, and the site has been known to go offline on occasion so its position is a precarious one, but it is certainly worth checking out and still has a lot to offer.
A slightly different slant on the language forums to the rest and as such is a useful addition. This forum concentrates on vocabulary, grammar and translations from one language to another. It is an essential resource and invaluable once you reach the stage where you are beginning to read and write in your language.
6) Antimoon
A very basic interface with no discernible organisation but a lot of members and many useful posts. Sometimes the posts can feel a bit spammy or slightly inflammatory, but if you pick through these you will find some excellent information and help from some very knowledgeable members. Foreign language is not the site's main focus (it is mostly for learning English) but its foreign language forum is worth a visit and holds some gems of information.
7) Lingforum
A small but interesting forum that seems to have a fondness for the science of languages: The members discuss linguistics, with the semantics and phonetics of different languages warranting enough importance for their own sub-forums. It may sound dull to some, but it is actually fascinating if you like languages, and if the site was a little bigger and a little more organised, Lingforum would surely have ranked higher.
8) Ultralingua
Although Ultraingua is a company that makes downloadable dictionaries, it also has a language forum that accompanies its site. It is limited with a small group of members and concentrates mainly on the vocabulary and grammar of 12 different languages. While it doesn't have the choice or range of the bigger forums, if you are looking for some advice on Norwegian or Esperanto grammar then it may be worth checking out.
9) Bright Hub
An interesting, albeit unusual language forum. Not a forum in the conventional sense; Brighthub retains a community feel and appears more like a blog than a forum with all members of the community contributing. It is still an interesting and informative resource though and a pleasant community to join. You can get information from others' posts or share your thoughts and opinions in your own.
A small and relatively new language forum that is broken into language and its contituent learning parts of reading, writing, speaking, grammar, etc. The only languages covered at the moment are Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, and Spanish. The posts are few, and the community small, but sometimes this is a great time to join a community—just as it is developing. Become a member as it grows and I am sure before long it will be a major player in the language forum world.
Summary
This is a list of the top 10 forums as I see it and of course you may not agree with the order or the inclusion or exclusion of certain sites. This is fine as everybody has different tastes on what they like and expect from a community forum. I just hope that you get something beneficial from the links above and that they help you make that leap to speaking a second language.
I would certainly recommend that everybody joins the top 3 at the very least and makes an effort to become part of the community. Each of these forums is welcoming to new members and will help you in any way they can to integrate you into the discussions. If you are a little nervous to begin with, I would recommend that you join one of the smaller forums such as Lingforum, as you may feel more at ease within the smaller pool of members.
Whatever you choose to do, I wish you luck with your language learning amd urge you strongly to make the most of the free resource of the internet forums.
By Neil Breakwell