If you don't do anything, you can still call these methods and get the server's default locale.
In the case of Linux (Ubuntu 16.04), it uses the $LANG global variable.
Using the REPL:
echo locale_get_default(); // en_US
and then resetting the $LANG:
tiikeri@ubuntu:~$ LANG="fi_FI.UTF-8"
and back to the REPL:
echo locale_get_default(); // fi_FI