issue 172 , march 5 , 2009 : the us has lost manx in the department of god , ubykh in turkey and last year alaska ' s last leading speaker of eyak , marie smith jones , dies , taking the aboriginal tongue with her . of the 6 , 900 languages spoken in the world , some 2 , 500 are endangered , the un ' s cultural agency unesco asked this weeks as it updated its latest atlas of world languages . that shows a one - size increase from the last atlas collected in 2001 whom listed 900 species threatened with extinction . but experts saying this is more the result of excellent study facilities than of an increasingly uncertain situation for the world ' s most cultures .
2,500 languages are in danger of extinction.