strange characters

i just finished looking at this article (http://www.databasejournal.com/featu...le.php/2210771) where at some point the author says MySQL has support for latin1_de.
I remembered my case, so here it is:
Is there a suport for something like latin1_pt?
What i want: have both the webpage and mysql writting plain portuguese (my language) without strange characters.
In my language (portuguese), apple writes==maçã.
If i make an insert in mySQL writting 'maçã', when i use a php script to read the database, in my web page i get: 'ma‡Æ', which is impossible to read!!!.
On the other hand, if i use a php script to store data in the database and, in the web page i insert the correct word 'maçã', when i retrieve the data, i can read in the web page the right word 'maçã', but if i go to the DOS window to read the database, in mySQL the word written for 'maçã' is: 'maþÒ'.
I tried the following solutions (none resulted)
1) go to 'my' mySQL file and write:
"language=portuguese"
2) go to php.ini and under data handling, wrote:
default_charset = "iso-8859-1"
No way...
Of course if i write in dos/mysql using html entities it works and i can read correctly from the webpage,
but working manually doesnt seems pratical.
How can i overcome this?
note: i'm an absolute beguinner in these matters...
thanks