Breakdown of Ĉi-monate nia familio havas pli da laboro ol en la pasinta monato.
havi
to have
la
the
en
in
laboro
the work
Questions & Answers about Ĉi-monate nia familio havas pli da laboro ol en la pasinta monato.
Why is ĉi-monate written with a hyphen, and what exactly does it mean?
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.
Could this sentence also use ĉi tiun monaton instead of ĉi-monate?
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.
Why is it nia familio and not something else?