(no subject)
This appeared once in an article in the Economist:
Elav kala ujub vee all (Estonian)
Elävä kala ui veden alla (Finnish)
Eleven hal úszkál a víz alatt (Hungarian)
Philologists' labours have identified some 200 words with common roots in all three main Finno-Ugric tongues. Fully 55 of these concern fishing, and a further 15 are about reindeer; only three are about commerce. An Estonian philologist, Mall Hellam, came up with just one mutually comprehensible sentence: “the living fish swims in water.”
(...) A Finno-Ugric joke tells of migrating tribal forebears finding a signpost on the steppe reading: “To civilisation”. Those that could not read it went north and became Finns. Those that could went to central Europe and became Hungarians.