PHP: Split multibyte string (word) into separate characters

try a regular expression with 'u' option, for example

  $chars = preg_split('//u', $string, -1, PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY);

An ugly way to do it is:

mb_internal_encoding("UTF-8"); // this IS A MUST!! PHP has trouble with multibyte
                               // when no internal encoding is set!
$string = ".....";
$chars = array();
for ($i = 0; $i < mb_strlen($string); $i++ ) {
    $chars[] = mb_substr($string, $i, 1); // only one char to go to the array
}

You should also try your way with mb_split with setting the internal_encoding before it.