Remove diacritical marks (ń ǹ ň ñ ṅ ņ ṇ ṋ ṉ ̈ ɲ ƞ ᶇ ɳ ȵ) from Unicode chars

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I am looking at an algorithm that can map between characters with diacritics (tilde, circumflex, caret, umlaut, caron) and their "simple" character.

For example:

ń  ǹ  ň  ñ  ṅ  ņ  ṇ  ṋ  ṉ  ̈  ɲ  ƞ ᶇ ɳ ȵ  --> n
á --> a
ä --> a
ấ --> a
ṏ --> o

Etc.

  1. I want to do this in Java, although I suspect it should be something Unicode-y and should be doable reasonably easily in any language.

  2. Purpose: to allow easily search for words with diacritical marks. For example, if I have a database of tennis players, and Björn_Borg is entered, I will also keep Bjorn_Borg so I can find it if someone enters Bjorn and not Björn.

diacritics transliteration unicode java
12 Answers

Please note that not all of these marks are just "marks" on some "normal" character, that you can remove without changing the meaning.

In Swedish, å ä and ö are true and proper first-class characters, not some "variant" of some other character. They sound different from all other characters, they sort different, and they make words change meaning ("mätt" and "matt" are two different words).

unwind_281690
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