A very common clue is the ending -a in the dictionary form (nominative singular). Many Polish nouns ending in -a are feminine, and rysa is one of them.
So:
Adjectives in Polish must agree with the noun in gender, number, and case.
Because rysa is:
the adjective takes the feminine singular nominative form:
So mała matches rysa correctly.
Jest means is.
It is the 3rd person singular form of the verb być = to be.
So:
In Polish, the verb to be is often omitted in the present tense only in some informal or stylistic contexts with certain predicate types, but in a basic sentence like this, jest is completely normal and standard.
In standard Polish, Ta rysa jest mała is the normal full sentence.
Leaving out jest here would usually sound incomplete or unnatural to learners in ordinary standard speech. So for a beginner, it is best to keep jest.
Polish is a more inflected language than English. Words often change their endings to show grammatical information.
Here:
English does not do this much:
But in Polish, agreement is important:
It is in the nominative case.
Why? Because rysa is the subject of the sentence: This scratch is small.
The basic nominative form is what you usually see in dictionaries. Here all three agreeing words are in nominative singular feminine:
Yes, Polish word order is more flexible than English.
The most neutral version is:
You can also say:
So the original sentence is the most straightforward and neutral one.
A helpful approximate pronunciation is:
RIH-sah, but with the Polish y, which is not exactly the English i sound.
Notes:
So try something like RIH-sah, while keeping the y distinctly Polish.
Approximately: MAH-wa
Important detail:
So:
That gives MAH-wa.
Yes. Depending on context, rysa can mean things like:
So even if the meaning is already given to you, it is useful to know that the exact English translation may change with context.
Usually, yes. In Polish, ta can often mean this or that, depending on context.
Polish does have ways to emphasize that, for example:
So:
Polish does not have articles like English a/an and the.
So rysa can mean:
The exact meaning depends on context.
That is why Ta rysa is literally closer to this scratch, with no separate word for the or a anywhere in the sentence.