#idu

The rest of the crew on the Sorrow learned quickly that picking up that tall Tevinter elf in Wycome would inevitably mean two things: they would be treated to nightly tellings of all manner of fanciful stories accompanied by a skillful rendition in shadow puppets, and the only place they would see Idu until he left was by his side.  Not that any of them minded; Lux brought more than welcome levity with him from the moment anyone knew he would be boarding, and being attached to him at the hip making dragons on the sails gave Idu a way to speak he’d never have without him.  It meant he could be a bit less of a bitter, feisty runaway with more entirely justified anger than one would think could conceivably fit inside a body that small, and a bit more of the silly, fun-loving youth the world had deprived him of the opportunity to be otherwise, if only for a while.  A while that each time was more time than the last, and not one of them would complain or object when instead of disembarking at this port, or the next, Lux spouted off excuses to stay and tell stories for Idu to paint in shadows on the sails a little longer.

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So I know we've probably all heard of Idu through one source or another but like I've never understood how it works so I did some searching and came across a nice example from The Essentials of Agriculture and Sericulture, written in 1415 (that I found on KR Wikipedia lol)

"As silkworms are animals of Yang energy, they do not like water. They only eat mulberry leaves and do not drink water."

In Classical characters:

蠶陽物大惡水故食而不飮

잠양물대악수고식이부음

jam yangmul, dae-ak su, goshik-i bu eum.

Idu adds the grammatical particles and necessary terms from Korean. This would look like:

蠶段陽物是乎等用良水氣乙厭却桑葉叱分喫破爲遣飮水不冬

잠단 양물시호등용량 수기을 염각 상섭질분 끽파위견 음수부동

jam-dan yangmul-sihodeungyongryang sugi-eul yeomgak, sangseop-jilbun kkikpawigyeon, eumsubudong.

Except that’s not how it’s read (unless you’re an inexperienced yangban ;-)). In Idu, certain characters (underlined) are not read according to their hanja pronunciations. Sometimes two characters can be combined to pronounce one syllable. And some characters are not used for their meaning, but solely for pronunciation. This leads to:

蠶段 陽物是乎等用良 水氣乙 厭却 桑葉叱分 喫破爲遣 飮水不冬

잠딴 양물이온들쓰아 수기을 염각 상섭뿐 끽파하고 음수안들

jam-ddan yangmul-iondeulsseu-a sugi-eul yeomgak, sangseop-ppun kkikpa-hago, eumsu andeul.

I’m guessing that’s how it’s said in not Old Korean but ‘old’ Korean. In modern Korean:

누에는 양물이므로 물기를 싫어해 뽕잎만 먹고 물을 마시지 않는다.