locali

Locali is the plural form of the Italian noun locale. In Italian, the word most often refers to a place, site, or space, and is commonly used to designate a public establishment such as a bar, ristorante, caffè, negozio, or other venue. The plural locali therefore denotes multiple places or spaces, for example locali del centro or locali commerciali. The term can also appear in architecture and urban planning to indicate the internal spaces of a building or the rooms on a given floor.

Beyond this everyday sense, locale also has a broader meaning in literature and film: the locale of a story is its setting. In information technology, locale is borrowed to denote the language and regional settings of software, with plural locali used in Italian to refer to multiple such configurations. The etymology traces to Latin locus, meaning “place,” via the Italian adjective locale meaning “pertaining to place.” In some informal usages, locali can refer to the locals—the inhabitants of a place—but this is less common and often ambiguous; more precise terms such as abitanti or residenti are preferred for meaning “the people from here.”