title: How to strip all non-English characters from varchar in SQL Server?
body: <p>I'm trying to replace non-English letters from the database. The following does not work, it's retuning the same as input..</p>
  
  <pre><code>DECLARE @string VARCHAR (100)= 'AlfonsínSomoza' 
  DECLARE @pos INTEGER
  
  WHILE PATINDEX('%[^a-z]%',@string) &gt; 0  
  BEGIN
     SET @pos = PATINDEX('%[^a-z]%',@string)
     SET @string = REPLACE(@string,SUBSTRING(@string,@pos,1),'')
  END
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>It returns:</p>
  
  <pre><code>AlfonsínSomoza
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>But I need </p>
  
  <pre><code>AlfonsinSomoza
  </code></pre>