issue 172 , march 5 , 2009 : the world has lost donegal in the isle of lewis , ubykh in turkey and last day washington ' s sole native person of eyak , marie smith jones , died , taking the aboriginal language with her . of the 6 , 900 languages spoken in the americas , some 2 , 500 are affected , the un ' s cultural agent unesco said this week as it released its latest ranking of national names . that represents a multi - fold increase from the last atlas compiled in 2001 which listed 900 languages associated with extinction . but specialists indicate this is more the result of better research efforts than of an increasingly threatening situation for the world ' s many fluent .
2,500 languages are in danger of extinction.