It was the primary language spoken by the majority of the Panay people whom the first Spanish colonizers encountered upon their arrival and subsequent settlement in Ogtong (now Oton, Iloilo) between the late 16th and early 17th centuries.

It is also spoken in Iloilo province as a primary language in the city of Passi, in the municipalities of Alimodian, San Joaquin, Lambunao, Calinog, Leon, Miag-ao, Pavia, Badiangan, San Miguel, Guimbal, San Enrique, Tigbauan, Igbaras, Leganes, Pototan, Bingawan, San Rafael, Mina, Zarraga, Oton, Santa Barbara, Cabatuan, Janiuay, Maasin, New Lucena, Dueñas, Dingle, and Tubungan, and certain villages in Palawan and Mindanao – especially in the Soccsksargen region (particularly the province of Sultan Kudarat) by citizens who trace their roots to Antique or to Karay-a-speaking areas of Panay island.

On the south, in Iloilo towns on the other hand, the dialects closely resemble that of the standard Kinaray-a spoken in San Jose de Buenavista, lowland Sibalom and Hamtic.

A distinct dialect of Karay-a is spoken in central Iloilo where a lot of Hiligaynon loanwords are used and some Kinaray-a words are pronounced harder as in rigya or ja ('here') of southern Iloilo and San José de Buenavista area as compared to giya of Janiuay, Santa Barbara, and nearby towns.

Two highly accented dialects of Kinaray-a can be heard in Anini-y and Tobias Fornier in Antique and San Joaquin, Leon, and Tubungan in Iloilo.

To some extent, an intermediate dialect of Hiligaynon and Kinaray-a is spoken in Mindanao, mainly in Sultan Kudarat province.

[8] The latter builds on Brigadier General Vicente Pangantihon [es]'s introduction of a separate letter ⟨ə⟩ for /ɨ/ through the publication of Karay-a Rice Tradition Revisited,[9] but using ⟨ë⟩ in ⟨ə⟩'s place.

Informal writing, however, contravenes this orthographic rule such as, for example, when words such as balunggay, kambiyo, lanaw, puwede, ruweda and tuáw are written as *balunggai, *kambio, *lanao, *puede, *rueda and *tuao.

⟨Ë⟩, referred to as malëm·ëk nga ⟨i⟩ and which Pangantihon had originally written as ⟨ə⟩, represents /ɨ/, a phoneme that occurs natively in Karay-a and in some other languages spoken in the Philippines such as Ivadoy, Maranao and Pangasinan.