Searching for accented words (parlé) returns non-accented forms (parle); is that intended?

Question

I noticed that searching for a word containing an accented character also yields unaccented results of the same length (searching for parlé yields both parlé and parle). Using quotes doesn't seem to make a difference in that respect.

In a comment to another question, someone mentioned what seems to be a flip side question to my own from the perspective of a different language (Spanish). In so many words it seems at this point the accented form is treated as non accented for search purposes and both accented and non accented forms are returned. I'm not sure what to make out of the situation.

Is that the intended behavior ? In French I don't expect to find parlé if I'm searching for parle, and vice versa. Or maybe it's just me?

Answer 1

I'm sure it's intended, since search was designed for English.

But on a site where languages whose orthography uses letters with diacritics, having no way to search for letters with diacritics is crippling.

There should be a way to search for élevé (raised, high) or to search for élève (pupil) without bringing in both. There should also be a way to make a diacritics-insensitive search, as a convenience when the searcher can't type diacritics or isn't sure of the spelling.

My proposal is that searches in quotes ("élevé", "élève") require a case-insensitive match, while searches without quotes (élevé, élève) ignore diacritics (in addition to the stem matches that they already do, so they would also find élèves, etc.).