Elisa speaking Veronese

This video was recorded by Hugo Campbell in Italy, where he was visiting at the time. Veronese is a variety of the Venetian language, spoken in its entirety by as many as four million people, primarily in the Italian region of Venice. It is also spoken by diaspora communities worldwide, especially in the Americas. A literary language since the 13th century CE, Venetian enjoyed a considerable amount of prestige throughout the Mediterranean, as a lingua franca of trade and commerce through the turn of the nineteenth century, when it was displaced in its official capacity by Italian. Nonetheless, the language has been recognized as co-official in Venice since 2007 and is used actively online today.