The Ma'di people are found in Magwi County in South Sudan, and in Adjumani and Moyo districts in Uganda.
Ma'di is mutually intelligible with Olu'bo, Lugbara, Moru, Avokaya, Kaliko and Logo, all of which are also Moru–Madi languages.
This is possibly because during the first civil war in the Sudan, most Sudanese Ma'di were settled among the Acholi in Uganda.
It is still possible even today to find among the Sudanese Ma'di people who can trace their ancestry to the neighbouring tribes – Bari, Kuku, Pajulu, Acholi, etc.
Crazzolara claims that there are linguistic traces of Ma'di found in Nilotic languages like Dinka (especially Atwot), Nuer and Lwo (Acholi, Alur and Lango) and among the Bantu (Nyoro and Ganda).
In Adjumani itself, the Oyuwi (ojuwt) clans are said to speak three languages: Ma'di, Kakwa and Lugbara.
The symbols used in Blackings and Fabb (2003) were chosen for "visual clarity" and do not reflect their IPA values or the standard orthography.