[2005] replace all accents in a string (e.g. "À,Á,Â,Ã,Ä,Å,à,á,â,ã,ä,å" to "a")

[lplover2k]

i want to convert the accents to regular characters

e.g.
"À,Á,Â,Ã,Ä,Å,à,á,â,ã,ä,å" --> "a"

i am currently using arrays and loops to replace them but it takes quite some time... it's not performance friendly at all.....