Abstract— This study scrutinizes the dialectal variation of Kafinoonoo (also referred to as Kafa), an Omotic language spoken in the Kafa Zone of southwestern Ethiopia. Employing a descriptive survey methodological framework from dialect geography, including guided interviews and semantic domain questionnaires with eleven native speakers from geographically varied locations, the research identifies two primary dialect clusters: a north-western group (Gesha, Saylem, Bitta, Chenna, Shisho-Inde, Gewatta) and a central-south-eastern group (Bonga, Gimbo, Decha, Addiyo, Tello, Chetta). The central-south-eastern variety has been established as the standard language for education, media, and government functions. This paper argues that the privileging of this dialect is not a linguistic inevitability but a sociolinguistic consequence of historical, geographical, and political factors. These include the region's history as the heartland of the Kafa Kingdom, the associated social prestige of its speakers, and post-1991 Ethiopian language policy. A lexicon of 52 key variations provides empirical evidence for the dialectal split, contributing to the understanding of language standardization in under-documented Omotic languages. The findings underscore that successful standardization must be grounded in empirical dialectology while acknowledging the socio-political realities that shape linguistic hierarchies.
Tilahun Gebretsadik Adare (Wed,) studied this question.