Intermittent problem with UTF-8 characters

[gssincla]

I am running a fairly standard LAMP stack.The problem is an intermittent rendering of UTF-8 characters correctly. About 50% of the time the non-ASCII UTF-8 characters render correctly (e.g. with appropriate diacritical marks), but about 50% of the time I get the '?' rendition instead. If I reload the page, sometimes it corrects the problem and sometimes it does not. It happens with all browsers on all platforms, which suggests a MYSQL or Apache problem but I have not been able to figure it out.The data base itself is in UTF-8 format and I have never seen the problem while browsing the database in phpMyAdmin.I issue a SET NAMES utf-8 command upon opening the data base (and have tried changing that to a SET CHARSET utf-8 command) with no luck.What's confusing me is that it is intermittent, happening in streaks, e.g. it will happen on 30 pages in a row (even if they are just reloads), and then clear up for 10 pages, and then happen again for a few pages, etc.You can try to see the problem by hitting the 'list' button here: http://latin-words.com/list_vocab.php though it may take many reloads to either make it happen or make it go awayServer Configuration:Ubuntu: 9.10Mysql: 5.1.37PHP 5.2.10Apache 2.2.12Any hints would be greatly appreciated?