"...it happened to be just a couple of friends."

hmmm, "it happened" sounds more like being surprise, like a coincident. However the person was expecting that it will be just a couple of people.

it was

thanks for the explanation

The word "couple" itself is singular.

We’ve had a few discussions on this already. English works differently from German here. In English, what comes first in this sort of sentence (i.e. “it”) is the subject, so whether the phrase “a couple of friends” is seen as singular or plural (#8-10) is irrelevant. (In fact it’s always treated as plural in English.)

It was just a couple of friends getting together for a movie.

To add to the above, the reason (as pointed out) is because "it" is singular, and therefore the verb and subject need to agree. That means "it was" has to be used.

#14

#15

Discussion deleted

(expressions of quantity -- a lot of, a number of, a couple of, etc.)
related discussion: number of + Singular or Plural?

(the 'Das Problem sind die Nachbarn' thread)
related discussion: variety with plural or singular verb? - #36

I agree with #4, #11, and #15. 'It' is singular and takes a singular verb, even if it is only a placeholder and does not refer to any particular noun.

'Couple' is a red herring because it is not the subject of the sentence. The grammatical subject is 'it,' which is singular.

The discussion about 'couple' could be useful in a different thread, but it's a completely different subtopic within the larger topic of differences in singular/plural agreement in German and English. For the purposes of this discussion, the word 'couple' doesn't matter. We can see the grammar more easily by replacing 'a couple of' with 'two.'

It was just a couple of friends.
It was just two friends.

In simple linking sentences of the type

A [linking verb] B,

English defines A as the subject, even if A is is a small pronoun like 'it.'

That is different from German, in which B can be the subject and can determine the number of the verb.

So German sentences in which a plural verb follows a singular pronoun, such as 'Es waren,' 'es sind,' 'das waren,' 'das sind,' cannot be translated literally. In a linking sentence in English where the subject (= the noun or pronoun before the verb) is 'it' or 'that,' the verb must be singular. English cannot have '*it were' or '*that were' -- if you want the verb to be plural, you must begin with a plural pronoun.

The only exception in English is 'there was' vs. 'there were,' where the verb does change and the placeholder stays the same. The reason is that 'there' is not a pronoun, but an adverb. There is no noun A -- the only noun (or pronoun) comes after the verb.

What's that?
It's a duck.

What are those?
Those are ducks.

I went to the door and looked through the peephole. There were two people in the hall.

I went to the door and looked through the peephole. It wasn't the pizza delivery person -- it was two people.

Hope that helps.

If anyone would like to go over all that once more in German, just to make it easier for beginners and intermediate learners, it might be really helpful -- just don't get sidetracked by 'couple.' (-:

Sorry, I can't edit without redoing all the links and italics by hand.

—> I agree with #4, #8, #11, #15, etc.

(I didn't mean to leave anyone out who made the same point.)

I found this example from #13 jarring:

#20: "There" is a syntactic expletive. No argument there. The issue concerns "it." Wikipedia, in fact, says, "There is some disagreement over whether the it in such sentences as "It is raining now" is an expletive. I would say yes it is for that sentence, but not with "team" in the background. But, as the Wiki-gods say, "there is some disagreement." Which is why I agreed that my hammer went awry. By no direct English equivalent, I meant, of course, no equivalent sentence with it=es. We have to substitute there=da. I could have said that more explicitly.

I also agree with #21 -- good catch.

I disagree with #21. It's perfectly natural to use 'they' to refer to 'two dark figures'.

Could it be a question of register? "they were" being more sophisticated / literary, "it was" being more colloquial?

More a question of emphasis than of register, I'd say.

I still think you were right the first time and it's a question of what sounds most natural. I don't think 'they' sounds right because it implicitly assumes that the figures were individuals already identified or defined, when all we know is something vague about two dark shapes.

But part of the problem is that the sentence wasn't very natural, period -- it was something of an artificial construction in the first place. And one with a dangling participle to boot -- it should of course have read 'He spotted two dark figures coming towards him,' as 'coming towards him' does not describe the grammatical subject 'he.'

Yeah, I noticed that too, hm -- us. But I didn't want to confuse matters any more ... :)

"they" sounds perfectly normal to me too. I think it emphasises that the figures were identifiable as adult persons, and not a person and a large dog or a child e.g.    

You could even say "would have been an exaggeration" so pluperfect conditional :)