Dutch Sunrise

Green fields fill the farmer fans with everlasting energy as the enormous orange ball begins to lift itself above the hazy horizon. Animals and others also ascend above their beds and begin the day anew, trusting that the ample earth with supply them with the richness of root and fruit which they have for so long sought in the soggy fields of the Netherlands. The Dutch people are a nation and ethnic group native to the Netherlands. In the Middle Ages the Low Countries were situated around the border of France and the Holy Roman Empire, forming a part of their respective peripheries, and the various territories of which they consisted had de facto become virtually autonomous by the 13th century. Under the Habsburgs, the Netherlands were organised into a single administrative unit, and in the 16th and 17th centuries the Northern Netherlands gained independence from Spain as the Dutch Republic. Dutch is a West Germanic language spoken by around 22 million people. The language was first attested around 500 AD, in a Frankish legal text, the Lex Salica, and has a written record of more than 1500 years, although the material before ca. 1200 is fragmentary and discontinuous. Standard Dutch has a sound inventory of 13 vowels, 6 diphthongs and 23 consonants, of which the voiceless velar fricative (hard ch) is considered a well known sound, perceived as typical for the language. This sound uses the following file from Freesound: http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=121804