Locale It It
Use when working with the Italian (Italy) locale (`it-IT`) — its endonym Italiano (Italia), Latin script, left-to-right (LTR) direction, or spoken-population data. Reference data and translation guidance (register, grammar, idiom, typography) for this specific locale; see [[locale]] for general i18n/l10n concepts (BCP 47, plural rules, RTL) that apply across all locales.
Reference data for the Italian (Italy) locale — endonym Italiano (Italia), written in the Latin script, left-to-right (LTR).
Identifiers
- BCP 47 tag:
it-IT - ISO 639-1:
it - ISO 639-3:
ita - Script: Latn (Latin)
- Region: IT (Italy)
- Text direction: ltr — left-to-right (LTR)
Speakers (approximate)
- L1 (native): 55,000,000
- L2 (additional): 3,000,000
- L1+L2 (total): 58,000,000
Base locale
This is a regional variant of Locale It 001 (Italian), the base/macro locale for this language.
Pluralization
CLDR plural categories for this locale: one, many, other (3 forms).
- one —
i = 1 and v = 0(e.g. 1) - many —
e = 0 and i != 0 and i % 1000000 = 0 and v = 0 or e != 0..5(e.g. 1000000, …) - other — everything else (e.g. 0, 2~16, 100, 1000, …)
See Unicode Messageformat for writing plural messages using these categories.
Translating into this locale
Apply Locale It 001 with the conventions of Italy.
- Institutions: use the official Italian names for bodies and laws (Agenzia delle Entrate, INPS, Codice civile) without translating them; the Italian Constitution and EU law have official Italian texts that should be quoted unchanged.
- Formats: euro (€) after the amount; day/month/year; 24-hour clock; decimal comma and period for thousands.
- Tone: formal in public administration (the burocratese register is wordy and best avoided in new text; Italian public-administration style handbooks push for clarity); friendly "tu" appears in tech and retail.
- Regional note: Italy has strong regional vocabulary (for example "cellulare" is standard; "telefonino" is common), but written standard Italian is uniform.
Common pitfalls
- Importing bureaucratic phrasing ("si prega di voler cortesemente") into UI text.
- Using English capitalization for headings.
- The general pitfalls in Locale It 001 also apply.
Learn more
- Locale for BCP 47 identifiers, locale-sensitive formatting, pluralization, and text-direction concepts that apply across all locales.
- Unicode Messageformat for writing plural/selection messages correctly for this locale's grammar.
- Accademia della Crusca (https://accademiadellacrusca.it)
- Microsoft Localization Style Guide, Italian (https://aka.ms/italian-styleguide)