Even "ch" appears as two letters, in czech its considered as one letter and its order in alphabet is after H letter (so correct order is a,b,c,d,e,f,g,h,ch,i,j (I skipped some national characters). But when I do 
substr (colname, 1, 1) on column containing words begining with ch Im getting only "C"

this sql: SELECT SUBSTRING(title, 1, 1) AS title\_truncated FROM node node WHERE node.type in ('termin') GROUP BY title\_truncated ORDER BY title\_truncated ASC"

returns: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J (so no ch).

btw database is using utf8\_czech\_ci