You can collect email data in **.mbox** text files using a search engine. For example, a google search for `filetype:mbox from` results in plenty of .mbox data. My best attempt at French-only .mbox files is [this search][2].

Individual .mbox files can be concatenated into one large file (linux method):

    cat mboxfile1 > mboxfile
    echo >> mboxfile
    cat mboxfile2 >> mboxfile

To parse the text, one option is the [mailbox library][3] in python. See an example code [here][4]. Here is the important snippet

    import mailbox
    mbox = mailbox.mbox('emails.mbox')
    for message in mbox:
        print str(message.get_payload()) # print body of each email in emails.mbox file

([my self-source][1])

Along this line you can also look for French language chat logs (i.e. [IRC logs][5])


  [1]: https://stackoverflow.com/a/20992684/2327328
  [2]: https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&as_q=&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=facebook&as_nlo=&as_nhi=&lr=lang_fr&cr=countryFR&as_qdr=all&as_sitesearch=&as_occt=any&safe=images&tbs=lr%3Alang_1fr&as_filetype=mbox&as_rights=
  [3]: http://docs.python.org/2/library/mailbox.html
  [4]: https://gist.github.com/philshem/8905002
  [5]: https://www.french-net.net/