Chulym is a moribund language and will most likely be extinct by the 2030s. It is listed in the UNESCO Red Book of Endangered Languages. During the filming of the 2008 American documentary film "The Linguists", linguists Greg Anderson and K. David Harrison interviewed and recorded 20 speakers and estimated there may be between 35 and 40 fluent speakers out of a community of overall 426 members. The youngest fluent speaker was 54 at the time of filming. Lemskaya mentions that this person seems to be the youngest speaker of the Tutal dialect, whereas she has found speakers in their late 40s of the Melet dialect (which Anderson & Harrison call 'Upper Chulym').