> Right now PHP does not support Unicode at a low level. There are ways to ensure that UTF-8 strings are processed OK, but it’s not easy, and it requires digging in to almost all levels of the web app, from HTML to SQL to PHP. We’ll aim for a brief, practical summary.

https://phptherightway.com/#php_and_utf8

This is a web language? PHP still has these kind of issues because of its culture: Get it done now and ignore any future costs.