Khanty settlements are mainly situated in river valleys (of the Vakh, Kazym, Agan, Salym, Jugan, Synja, Nazym, Vasjugan a.o.), the northernmost variants reaching the estuary of the river Ob'. The population is concentrated in the Khanty-Mansijskij Avt. Okrug (53 %) and the Jamalo-Neneckij Avt. Okr. (25 %), both semi-autonomous regions within the West-Siberian Tjumen' Oblast'. A small part of the Khanty population lives in the Tomsk Region (oblast') (3,6%). According to various sources the overall number of the Khanty population in the Russian Federation was given at 21,000 in 1970, 22,283 in 1989 and 13,000 in 1998.

Though generally referred to as a single language, Khanty is remarkable for its great divergence of dialects, which demonstrate significant differences at all levels of the language. Khanty dialects are mutually unintelligible and viewing them as separate languages is not without grounds. The most commonly accepted classification is the one dividing the Khanty language into three main dialects, Northern, Southern and Eastern Khanty, respectively. The Northern and Southern dialects show several common characteristics, which have led to scholars' grouping them together as Western Khanty.

The process of establishing the literary norm for the Khanty language has always been complicated by the considerable distinctiveness of each of the Khanty dialects. Writing systems for the Khanty language, based first on the Latin, later on the Russian alphabet with additional symbols, which were introduced in the 1930s, did lead to a unified standard for all Khanty variants. Attempts to develop teaching materials in Khanty were made mostly for the Northern and partly for the Western dialects, spoken in areas where large native communities are located and where the tradition of the use of the language has not been broken. Today the northern dialects of Kazym and Shuryshkar constitute the basis for the Khanty literary language, which, however, cannot and does not serve as a written medium for speakers of other dialects. For Eastern Khanty, no literary standard has been developed so far.

The dialects of the Vasjugan and Aleksandrovskij Khanty have been studied dramatically less than others, probably due to their isolated location away from large population centers. Whereas the former has been dealt with occasionally in the literature, the latter variant remains virtually unstudied.