3. The Man Who Would Be King
Listening activity
Listen to the song and try to identify all the words which contain either /u/ or /u:/. If you need help, click below to have a look at the lyrics of the song.
Further knowledge
Watch the videos to see how both sounds are correctly pronounced.
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/u:/ |
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Self-Assessment activity
Place the words from the box in the correct list taking into account whether they contain either sound /u/ or /u:/. Write them in order of appearance.
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who - would - whose - should - bush - took foot - book - put - move - could |
| /u/ | , , , , , |
| /u:/ |
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Curiosity
The Man Who Would Be King (1975)1
When the guide told Paco the title of the song, he remembered a film by John Huston with the same title, The Man Who Would Be King, which is an adaptation from Rudyard Kipling's short story of the same title. It starred Sean Connery, Michael Caine, Saeed Jaffrey, and Christopher Plummer as Kipling (giving a name to the short story's anonymous narrator).
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| By Potatojunkie. C. Commons |
The film follows two rogue ex-non-commissioned officers of the British Raj who set off from 19th century British India in search of adventure and end up as kings of Kafiristan. Kipling is believed to have been inspired by the travels of American adventurer Josiah Harlan during the period of the Great Game between Imperial Russia and the British Empire and James Brooke, an Englishman who became the "white Raja" of Sarawak in Borneo. Like much of his writing, Kipling's original story takes a nuanced, and in the end cold-edged view of imperialism; in Huston's telling, both East and West have their faults and virtues.
Shot on location in Morocco, Huston had planned to make the film since the 1950s, originally with Humphrey Bogart and Clark Gable, then Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas, and then Robert Redford and Paul Newman — Newman suggested British actors Connery and Caine.
Caine has maintained that if any film of his is remembered after his death, it would be The Man Who Would Be King because it is the sort of film that everyone says, even when the film came out, "No-one makes pictures like this any more."
1 Adapted from Wikipedia.org