Their speakers are primarily located around Northern Mindanao, Central Mindanao (presently called Soccsksargen) and Caraga regions where they are natively spoken.

Some outlying groups make Manobo geographically discontiguous as other speakers can be located as far as the southern peninsula of Davao Oriental, most of Davao Occidental and coastal areas of Sultan Kudarat.

The Kagayanen speakers are the most extremely remote and can be found in certain portions of Palawan.

Elkins (1974:637) classifies the Manobo languages as follows.

The Proto-Manobo phonemes are (Elkins 1974:616):