In the lingui stically heterogeneous Ab'ala town, the dwellers use di versified languages inrndifferent domain s. In Ab'a la town. over four di stin ct Ethiopian languages are in use. These arernAfa r-a f. Tigrinya, Amharic, Af"an Oromo, and Saho. 01' these languages. Afar-a t" and Tigrinya arernthe two indigenous local languages in the research area. On the other hand, Amharic, AfanrnOromo, and Saho are non-indi genous languages. Amharic which is used as the main officialrnlanguage, both in the town and the region, functions in the powerful domains as language. ofrnpublic services ( in office, school, health center). and authorities (in poli ce station andrncourtroom). However, Afar-af functions only in certain domains. It is used as the de-j ure regionalrnlanguage and res tricted only to the domains under grass root level (less powerful). It fun ctions inrnthe family domain. among co uples of th e same ethnic group (intra-marriage), and in reli giousrndonwin (along 'ith Arab ic). In other word s. Afar-af developed in the less-affiuent domai ns. Thisrnshows the language se izes so many important domains at the expense of Amharic. Besides,rnTigrinya to a greater degree and Afar-af to lesse r degree are the two most commonly usedrnlanguages in the domains of market. On the other hand, in the case of less powerful domainsrnlanguage use does not seem to be consistent in all the domains. This is evident in the familyrndomain in wh ich three languages are predominan tly used hy respondents 1Â·1 hik intc'I"