Ĉi-monate nia familio havas pli da laboro ol en la pasinta monato.

Ĉi-monate means this month in the sense of during this month / this month, as a time setting.

The hyphen is common in forms like:

• ĉi-jare = this year
• ĉi-semajne = this week
• ĉi-monate = this month
• ĉi-tage = today / this day

Here, -e makes it adverbial, so it tells you when something happens.

You could think of ĉi-monate as a compact time expression meaning in the current month.

Yes, but the nuance is a little different.

• ĉi-monate = this month / during this month as a general time frame
• ĉi tiun monaton = literally this month as a direct object of time duration

In many contexts, both are natural. But ĉi-monate is especially neat when you are simply setting the time for the whole sentence:

• Ĉi-monate nia familio havas pli da laboro...

That sounds very natural.

Nia familio means our family.

• nia = our
• familio = family

In Esperanto, possessive words like mia, via, lia, ŝia, nia, ilia behave like adjectives. They usually come before the noun:

• mia domo = my house
• nia familio = our family

There is no apostrophe construction like English family's or our family's here. Esperanto just uses the possessive adjective directly.

Because the sentence is expressing having more work, not being more work.

• havas = has
• estas = is

So:

• nia familio havas pli da laboro = our family has more work

If you said estas, the meaning would be wrong or unnatural here.

Because pli da laboro is the normal Esperanto way to say more work when talking about quantity.

Structure:

• pli = more
• da = of, used after quantity words
• laboro = work

So literally it is something like more of work, but in real usage it simply means more work.

This pattern is very common:

• multe da akvo = a lot of water
• iom da mono = some money
• pli da tempo = more time
• malpli da laboro = less work

This is a very common question.

In this sentence, da is used because it follows a quantity word: pli.

• pli da laboro = more work
• multe da pano = a lot of bread
• kilogramo da rizo = a kilogram of rice

Use da after words showing amount, measure, or quantity.

By contrast, de is more general and often shows possession, origin, or relation:

• la libro de Maria = Maria's book
• taso de teo = a cup of tea

So here, pli de laboro would be wrong.

In Esperanto, laboro is usually treated as a mass noun here, just like work in English.

So:

• pli da laboro = more work

You do not normally say pli da laboroj unless you specifically mean more jobs / more tasks / more separate pieces of work.

Compare:

• Mi havas multe da laboro. = I have a lot of work.
• Mi havas multajn laborojn. = I have many jobs/tasks.

So singular laboro is exactly what you would expect in this sentence.

Because in a da-phrase, the noun after da normally does not take the accusative ending.

The direct object role belongs to the whole quantity expression:

• nia familio havas pli da laboro

Here, the object is effectively the whole idea pli da laboro, not just laboro by itself.

This is why Esperanto normally keeps:

• multe da mono
• iom da tempo
• pli da laboro

without -n on the noun after da.

Ol means than in comparisons.

So:

• pli da laboro ol... = more work than...

This is the standard comparison pattern:

• pli ... ol = more ... than
• malpli ... ol = less ... than

Examples:

• Li estas pli alta ol mi. = He is taller than me.
• Ni havas malpli da tempo ol hieraŭ. = We have less time than yesterday.

So in your sentence, ol introduces what you are comparing the current month to.

Because it means than in the past month / than in the previous month.

The comparison is between:

• this month and
• in the previous month

The word en means in, so this part is literally:

• en la pasinta monato = in the past month / in the last month

This is natural because the sentence is comparing the amount of work during one time period with the amount of work during another time period.

Pasinta means past or previous, from the verb pasi = to pass.

So:

• la pasinta monato = the past month / the previous month / last month

It is a participial adjective, but learners do not need to overcomplicate it at first. In normal usage, just understand:

• pasinta semajno = last week
• pasinta jaro = last year
• la pasinta monato = last month

Sometimes, but pasinta monato is safer here.

• pasinta monato clearly means the month that has passed, that is, last month
• lasta monato can sometimes be understood as the final month in a series, not always the previous month

Because of that, pasinta monato is often clearer when you mean the month before this one.

Yes. Esperanto word order is fairly flexible.

This sentence begins with Ĉi-monate to set the time immediately:

• Ĉi-monate nia familio havas pli da laboro ol en la pasinta monato.

But other orders are also possible, for example:

• Nia familio havas pli da laboro ĉi-monate ol en la pasinta monato.

That also works.

The chosen order simply emphasizes the time frame first: this month.

Because familio is a single group word, just like English family.

Even though a family contains several people, the noun itself is singular:

• nia familio = our family

If you wanted the plural, you would say:

• niaj familioj = our families

So singular familio is completely correct.

A rough pronunciation guide is:

• Ĉi-monate ≈ chee mo-NAH-teh
• nia ≈ NEE-ah
• familio ≈ fah-mee-LEE-oh
• havas ≈ HAH-vahs
• pli ≈ plee
• da ≈ dah
• laboro ≈ lah-BOH-roh
• ol ≈ ohl
• en ≈ en
• la ≈ lah
• pasinta ≈ pah-SEEN-tah
• monato ≈ moh-NAH-toh

Esperanto stress is very regular: it normally falls on the second-to-last syllable.

So:

• mo-NA-te
• fa-mi-LI-o
• la-BO-ro
• pa-SIN-ta
• mo-NA-to

Yes. It is clear and natural.

A speaker of Esperanto would easily understand it as:

This month our family has more work than in the previous month.

It uses several very standard Esperanto patterns:

• time expression at the beginning: Ĉi-monate
• possession with havas
• quantity with pli da
• comparison with ol
• past/previous time with la pasinta monato

So it is a good model sentence for learners.