Column Character Set and Collation CHARACTER SET latin1 COLLATE latin1_german1_ci ); ALTER TABLE t1 MODIFY col1 VARCHAR(5) CHARACTER SET latin1 COLLATE latin1_swedish_ci; MySQL chooses the column character set and collation in the following manner: •If both  CHARACTER SET  charset_name  and  COLLATE  collation_name  are specified, character set charset_name  and collation  collation_name  are used. CREATE TABLE t1 ( col1 CHAR(10) CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci ) CHARACTER SET latin1 COLLATE latin1_bin; The character set and collation are specified for the column, so they are used. The column has character set  utf8  and collation  utf8_unicode_ci . •If  CHARACTER SET  charset_name  is specified without  COLLATE , character set  charset_name  and its default collation are used. CREATE TABLE t1 ( col1 CHAR(10) CHARACTER SET utf8 ) CHARACTER SET latin1 COLLATE latin1_bin; The character set is specified for the column, but the collation is not. The column has character set utf8  and the default collation for  utf8 , which is  utf8_general_ci . To see the default collation for each character set, use the  SHOW CHARACTER SET  statement or query the  INFORMATION_SCHEMA CHARACTER_SETS  table. •If  COLLATE  collation_name  is specified without  CHARACTER SET , the character set associated with collation_name  and collation  collation_name  are used. CREATE TABLE t1 ( col1 CHAR(10) COLLATE utf8_polish_ci ) CHARACTER SET latin1 COLLATE latin1_bin; The collation is specified for the column, but the character set is not. The column has collation utf8_polish_ci  and the character set is the one associated with the collation, which is  utf8 . •Otherwise (neither  CHARACTER SET  nor  COLLATE  is specified), the table character set and collation are used. Neither the character set nor collation is specified for the column, so the table defaults are used. The column has character set  latin1  and collation  latin1_bin . The  CHARACTER SET  and  COLLATE  clauses are standard SQL. If you use  ALTER TABLE  to convert a column from one character set to another, MySQL attempts to map the data values, but if the character sets are incompatible, there may be data loss. 1937 CREATE TABLE t1 ( col1 CHAR(10) ) CHARACTER SET latin1 COLLATE latin1_bin;