Certain characters failing to be inserted into database

I have multi language characters that are being inserted into a varchar column of a MySQL MyISAM table.

One particular character, and I'm sure there are others is failing to be inserted:

�

What is this character and how can I convert this character without affectin开发者_JAVA技巧g the entire word. The server side code that can be used to manipulate these words is php.

Examples of actual words including this symbol are as follows:

portugu�s

espa�a

etc

What is the best way to insert these words correctly?

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Getting charactset issues right can be a bit of a mission. Have a look at this blog post I wrote a couple of weeks ago which should cover this off. Post back here if you're still having problems.

How to Avoid Character Encoding Problems in PHP