title: PHP: Check alphabetic characters from any latin-based language?
body: <p>Using PHP I want to check that a string <strong>contains only alphabetic characters</strong> (I do not want to allow any numerals or special characters like !@#$%^&amp;*). <code>ctype_alpha()</code> would seem great for this purpose.</p>
  
  <p><strong>The problem is that I want to allow accented letters, such as found in French, etc. For example, I want to allow "Lórien".</strong></p>
  
  <p>I know that <code>ctype_alpha()</code> can be used with <code>set_locale()</code>, but that still seems too limited for this use case, since I want to allow characters from all latin-based languages.</p>
  
  <p>Any ideas how best to accomplish this?</p>
  
  <hr>
  
  <p>Note: The solution posted at <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3411566/how-can-i-detect-non-western-characters">How can I detect non-western characters?</a> is great for explicitly detecting non-Latin characters, but it allows special characters and white space, which I do not want to allow:</p>
  
  <p><code>preg_match('/[^\\p{Common}\\p{Latin}]/u', $string)</code></p>
  
  <p>I want something that would work like this, but limit the allowed characters to <strong><em>alphabetic characters</em></strong> (so no special characters like !@#$%^&amp;).</p>