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La huitième question était difficile.

La huitième question était difficile.
The eighth question was difficult.
From Lesson 231:Ordinal numbers·French

Breakdown of La huitième question était difficile.

être
to be
difficile
difficult
la question
the question
huitième
eighth

Questions & Answers about La huitième question était difficile.

Why is it la huitième instead of l'huitième?
Normally, French drops the vowel of the article before a silent 'h'. However, the number huit (eight) starts with an 'h aspiré' (aspirated h). Although it is silent, it acts like a consonant boundary. This means you cannot use elision (dropping the vowel), so it must be la huitième. The same rule applies to le huit and le onzième (the eleventh).
Why use the imperfect tense (était) instead of the passé composé (a été)?
The imperfect tense (l'imparfait) is used here because the sentence is describing a past state or condition. You are describing a quality of the question rather than an event that happened and finished at a specific moment. When setting a scene or describing how something was in the past, était is the natural choice.
Does the adjective difficile need to change because la question is feminine?
No, it stays exactly the same. Because the default masculine form of difficile already ends in an 'e', you do not add another 'e' for the feminine form. It would only change if you needed to make it plural by adding an 's'.

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