"It only exists on paper."
Translation:Det finns bara på papperet.
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I have this question, and... the sentence I got before this one was "Jag sover utan täcke," which lacks an article, so I answered 'täcket' which was recognized by Duo as a type-o. I think maybe this level of 'Objects' is teaching about interesting methods of communicating definiteness, but I've got questions about it (as Sammichechan & darian612 have).
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It's less flexible than English: you may be able to use "is" in this case to mean "exists", but you must use "finns" in Swedish.
What could be the context of this? In Brazil, for instance, there are quite simmilar sentences for laws that are not enforced (either by omission or just beacause sometimes it's not feasible or outdated - for instance, until 2005 there was a provision in the Penal Codex that adutery could be punished with imprisonment, but surely it was not enforced anymore by the time of its revocation) Or, put another way: are there laws that "only exist on paper" in Sweden?
Its an expression. It can mean what you are saying or as a concept such as "flying cars only exist on paper
What can't I say "Det bara finns..." instead of "Det finns bara..."? I thought "bara could go in front of the verb
The main thing is that the verb needs to go in second place (in main clauses that are not questions).
I typed Det bara finns.. as I was translating "It only exists..." not "It exists only..." Is det finns a fixed phrase?