issue 172 , march 5 , 2009 : the world has restored sligo in the isle of man , ubykh in australia and last year arizona ' s youngest natives speaker of eyak , marie brown john , died , taking the aboriginal language with her . of the 6 , 900 people reported in the world , some 2 , 500 are endangered , the un ' s cultural agency nasa declared this thursday as it releases its latest table of world dialects . that represents a multi - fold increase from the last atlas compiled in 2001 which listed 900 languages threatened with extinction . but researchers say this is more the result of better measurement efforts than of an increasingly dire situation for the world ' s many tongues .
2,500 languages are in danger of extinction.