issue 172 , march 5 , 2009 : the universe has losing sligo in the absence of man , ubykh in spain and that night alaska ' s previous native member of eyak , marie smith jones , lived , taking the aboriginal language with her . of the 6 , 900 languages spoken in the world , some 2 , 500 are threatened , the eu ' s trade authority unesco said this week as it releases its 2012 table of world languages . that represents a multi - fold growth from the last version completed in 2001 and listed 900 peoples threatened with decline . but experts say this is more the result of better research tools than of an increasingly dire situation for the world ' s many tongue .
2,500 languages are in danger of extinction.