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.