De kapper zegt dat een korte pony snel te kammen is.

Here, pony means a fringe in British English or bangs in American English.

Dutch pony can also mean the animal pony, but the context makes the meaning clear:

• de kapper = the hairdresser
• so een korte pony here means a short fringe / short bangs

This is a very common false friend for English speakers.

Dat introduces a subordinate clause, just like English that in The hairdresser says that...

So the sentence is built like this:

• De kapper zegt = The hairdresser says
• dat een korte pony snel te kammen is = that a short fringe is quick to comb / can be combed quickly

In Dutch, using dat after a verb like zeggen is very normal and helps mark the start of the dependent clause.

Because dat creates a subordinate clause, and in Dutch subordinate clauses the conjugated verb usually goes to the end.

So:

• main clause: Een korte pony is snel te kammen.
• subordinate clause: ...dat een korte pony snel te kammen is.

That final is is one of the most important word-order patterns in Dutch.

Kammen means to comb.
Te kammen is the infinitive with te, often similar to English to comb.

But in this sentence, te kammen is part of the pattern:

iets is te + infinitive

This often means:

• something can be ...-ed
• something is suitable/easy/possible to ...

So snel te kammen is means something like:

• can be combed quickly
• is quick to comb

It is not just a plain infinitive; it is part of a fixed Dutch structure.

Not exactly. It is not the regular Dutch passive.

A regular passive would look more like:

• kan snel gekamd worden = can be combed quickly
• wordt snel gekamd = is combed quickly

The structure is te kammen is closer to:

• is possible to comb
• can be combed
• is combable

So it has a passive-like meaning, but grammatically it is a different construction.

Because kort is an adjective placed before a noun, and in Dutch that adjective usually gets an -e ending.

So:

• een korte pony

This happens because pony is a de-word (de pony). With de-words, the adjective normally takes -e.

Compare:

• een korte pony = a short fringe
• een kort kapsel = a short hairstyle

In the second example, kapsel is a het-word, and with an indefinite singular het-word, the adjective can stay without -e.

Because snel is an adverb here, not an adjective directly describing the noun.

It modifies te kammen:

• snel te kammen = quick to comb / to comb quickly

Compare:

• een snelle trein = a fast train
  Here snelle is an adjective describing trein.
• snel lopen = to walk quickly
  Here snel is an adverb.

In your sentence, snel tells you how the combing can be done.

Not exactly.

• snel means quickly
• makkelijk means easily

So:

• snel te kammen = quick to comb / can be combed quickly
• makkelijk te kammen = easy to comb

In real life, the ideas can overlap, but the Dutch words are not the same. A learner should keep that difference in mind.

It would be:

Een korte pony is snel te kammen.

That is the basic main-clause version.

Comparing the two is helpful:

• Een korte pony is snel te kammen.
• De kapper zegt dat een korte pony snel te kammen is.

In the main clause, is comes earlier.
In the dat-clause, is moves to the end.

The main verb of the whole sentence is zegt.

The sentence has:

• a main clause: De kapper zegt
• a subordinate clause: dat een korte pony snel te kammen is

So there are two verbs you should notice:

• zegt = the finite verb of the main clause
• is = the finite verb inside the subordinate clause

This is useful because learners often focus on the final is and forget that the whole sentence is really centered on zegt.