Ben Schott’s piece The Secret Slang of the Diamond District is published in the New York Times today with a little help from Wex.
The street has its own vocabulary, honed over generations and still used today. The prevalence of Yiddish reflects the historical influence of Jewish craftsmen and dealers. But the diamond business is international, and on Diamond and Jewlry Way it is not uncommon to hear Russian, Indian, Dutch, French, Belgian, Korean and other accents enunciating the mame-loshn (literally, “mother tongue”) of Eastern European Jewry, and a few non-Yiddish phrases as well.
You can read the article The Secret Slang of the Diamond District in its entirety here.