do table alias's work in PHP?

The following statement will not work: $sql = "select * from sometable t1, sometable t2 where t1.field1 = t2.field2"; Reason being that the PHP doesnt appear to be able to handle the table alias's t1 and t2. Since I have to do a self-join to make my real code work properly I really need for this to function properly. I've tried this out submitting it to MySQL directly and it works just fine. Is there a way to fix this? I'm about to start on a work-around but it would be so much nicer if the SQL could just be made to work correctly. Thanks.