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Ten samochód jest mały, ale drogi.

Ten samochód jest mały, ale drogi.
This car is small, but expensive.
From Lesson 13:Coordinating conjunctions (i, a, ale)·Polish

Breakdown of Ten samochód jest mały, ale drogi.

być
to be
samochód
car
ten
this (m)
mały
small
drogi
expensive
ale
but

Questions & Answers about Ten samochód jest mały, ale drogi.

Why do we use ale here instead of the other word for 'but', a?
The word ale is used to show a strong contrast or an unexpected difference, exactly like 'but' in English. Here, it contrasts the car being small with it being expensive. The word a is used more for comparing two different subjects, like saying 'I am tall, while you are short'.
Is the comma before ale required?
Yes! In Polish, you must always put a comma before the conjunction ale, even in very short sentences like this one.
I usually see to jest for 'this is'. Why does this sentence start with ten?
When you are just pointing to something and saying 'This is a car', you use the fixed phrase To jest samochód. But when 'this' directly attaches to a specific noun (like 'This car...'), it has to match the noun's gender. Because samochód is a masculine word, 'this' becomes ten.
Why does mały end in -y but drogi ends in -i, if they both describe the same masculine car?
Both adjectives are in their standard masculine dictionary form. The regular masculine ending is -y, as seen in mały. However, a strict Polish spelling rule says you can never put the letter y after k or g. Since the base of the word for expensive ends in g, the ending must change to -i, making it drogi.

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