issue 172 , january 5 , 2009 : the world has loss donegal in the isle of person , ubykh in india and every year alaska ' s last native speaker of eyak , marie smith miller , deceased , taken the aboriginal language with her . of the 6 , 900 consonants used in the world , some 2 , 500 are endangered , the un ' s cultural agency unesco stated this week as it released its latest atlas of world languages . that involves a multi - fold increase from the original atlas compiled in 2001 when listed 900 dialects endangered with extinction . but practitioners say this is more the effect of better investigative tools than of an initially dire situation for the world ' s many tongues .
2,500 languages are in danger of extinction.