http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:The_living_fish_swims_in_water
Imperialism and (Indo-) Eurocentrism still rule in linguistics. Just take a look at that talk page.
comparisons
The comparison of these sentences is interesting. For me, "Elävä" and "Eleven" sounds even like English "a living" or German "ein lebender", also a slight resemblance of "veden"/"viz" with "water"/"Wasser" might be there. This might however be coincidence. Perhaps some of the word-stems have been influenced by indo-european languages.
"Perhaps some of the word-stems have been influenced by indo-european languages"
Influenced? By Indo-European languages? Why is it that people always assume that Indo-European languages have influenced Finno-Ugrian languages, while it could very well be the other way around:
"
Finno-Ugrian languages have influenced
Indo-European languages."