diff --git a/wp-includes/functions-formatting.php b/wp-includes/functions-formatting.php
index fcd8747bec..82b54f4ab7 100644
--- a/wp-includes/functions-formatting.php
+++ b/wp-includes/functions-formatting.php
@@ -375,4 +375,18 @@ function strip_all_but_one_link($text, $mylink) {
 	return $text;
 }
 
+
+// used by wp-mail to handle charsets in email subjects
+
+function wp_iso_descrambler($string) {
+  /* this may only work with iso-8859-1, I'm afraid */
+  if (!preg_match('#\=\?(.+)\?Q\?(.+)\?\=#i', $string, $matches)) {
+    return $string;
+  } else {
+    $subject = str_replace('_', ' ', $matches[2]);
+    $subject = preg_replace('#\=([0-9a-f]{2})#ei', "chr(hexdec(strtolower('$1')))", $subject);
+    return $subject;
+  }
+}
+
 ?>
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/wp-mail.php b/wp-mail.php
index e404b5f4fc..239c74d2f0 100644
--- a/wp-mail.php
+++ b/wp-mail.php
@@ -73,6 +73,9 @@ for ($iCount=1; $iCount<=$Count; $iCount++) {
 			if (preg_match('/Subject: /', $line)) {
 				$subject = trim($line);
 				$subject = substr($subject, 9, strlen($subject)-9);
+				if (!preg_match('#\=\?(.+)\?Q\?(.+)\?\=#i', $subject)) {
+				  $subject = wp_iso_descrambler($subject);
+				}
 				if ($use_phoneemail) {
 					$subject = explode($phoneemail_separator, $subject);
 					$subject = trim($subject[0]);