I have table with words dictionary in my language (latvian). CREATE TABLE words ( value varchar(255) COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci DEFAULT NULL ) ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8 COLLATE=utf8_unicode_ci; And let's say it has 3 words inside: INSERT INTO words (value) VALUES ('teja'); INSERT INTO words (value) VALUES ('vejš'); INSERT INTO words (value) VALUES ('feja'); What I want to do is I want to find all words that is exactly 4 characters long and where second character is 'e' and third character is 'j' For me it feels that correct query would be: SELECT * FROM words WHERE value LIKE '_ej_'; But problem with this query is that it returs not 2 entries ('teja','vejš') but all three. As I understand it is because internally MySQL converts strings to some ASCII representation? Then there is BINARY addition possible for LIKE SELECT * FROM words WHERE value LIKE BINARY '_ej_'; But this also does not return 2 entries ('teja','vejš') but only one ('teja'). I believe this has something to do with UTF-8 2 bytes for non ASCII chars? So question: What MySQL query would return my exact two words ('teja','vejš')? Thank you in advance