issue 172 , march 5 , 2009 : the universe has gone manx in the continent of wight , ubykh in china and last time alaska ' s last resident member of eyak , catherine hunter hughes , death , taking the aboriginal speaker with her . of the 6 , 900 languages spoken in the world , some 2 , 500 are extinct , the un ' s cultural entity unesco asked this week as it released its updated atlas of world peoples . that represents a three - fold increase from the original study compiled in 2001 which listed 900 languages threatened with genocide . but experts say this is more the result of less research efforts than of an increasingly dire situations for the world ' s numerous languages .
2,500 languages are in danger of extinction.