number 172 , march 5 , 2009 : the book has lost manx in the city of me , ubykh in turkey and last winter alaska ' s next native speaker of eyak , marie elizabeth jones , died , having the local language with her . of the 6 , 900 languages spoken in the world , some 2 , 500 are endangered , the un ' s cultural agency usa said this week as it released its latest atlas of world linguistics . that is a multi - step decline from the second atlas produced in 2001 which lists 900 languages threatens with extinction . but others say this is more the result of faulty research tool than of an increasingly dire situation for the world ' s many tongues .
2,500 languages are in danger of extinction.