issue 172 , march 5 , 2009 : the global has lost donegal in the absence of god , ubykh in germany and last year russia ' s last native tongue of eyak , marie louise jones , died , taking the aboriginal dialect with her . of the 6 , 900 languages recorded in the world , some 2 , 500 are extinction , the un ' s trade agency unesco said this november as it released its latest atlas of world languages . that represents a six - fold increase from the third one recorded in 2001 whom listed 900 languages threatened with genocide . but people suggest this is more the result of bad research tools than of an increasingly dire situation for the planet ' s many tongues .
2,500 languages are in danger of extinction.