Hackensack, New Jersey
The Hackensack Accent
Hackensack sits inside the New York City dialect area, which covers New York City, Long Island and northern New Jersey, United States. The nearest other area is Philadelphia, about 84km away.
Take the quiz and see how close your accent is →
What people in Hackensack sound like
- A raised, gliding vowel in “coffee”, “talk” and “dog”.
- Variable R-dropping: “car” can end in a vowel.
- “Cot” and “caught” stay firmly distinct.
- A raised “trap” vowel before nasals — “man” towards “meh-an”.
These are the markers of the New York City accent as a whole. No survey claims every speaker in Hackensack has all of them — the full New York City profile sets out where the region varies.
Hackensack against Boston
Hackensack is close enough to the Boston area that the two get confused. These are the questions where the survey expects a different answer on each side.
| Question | Hackensack | Boston |
|---|---|---|
| When you say “car” by itself, do you pronounce an R sound at the end? | the R at the end of “car” is pronounced | “car” ends in a vowel, with no R sound |
Dialect areas near Hackensack
Is your accent from Hackensack?
There is no way to answer that from a description. The test asks 29 questions about the words you use and how you say them, scores your answers against the New York City English profile and every other profile in the survey, and shows you where people who answer the way you do actually live.