title: Matching accented characters with Javascript regexes
body: <p>Here's a fun snippet I ran into today:</p>
  
  <pre><code>/\ba/.test("a") --&gt; true
  /\bà/.test("à") --&gt; false
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>However,</p>
  
  <pre><code>/à/.test("à") --&gt; true
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Firstly, <strong>wtf?</strong></p>
  
  <p>Secondly, if I want to match an accented character at the start of a word, how can I do that? (I'd really like to avoid using over-the-top selectors like <code>/(?:^|\s|'|\(\) ....</code>)</p>