Questions & Answers about Ήταν μια περίεργη σύμπτωση.
What does Ήταν mean here, and what tense is it?
Ήταν is the past form of είμαι (to be). In this sentence it means was.
More specifically, it is the imperfect form. Greek uses the imperfect of είμαι very often where English simply says was/were.
A useful point: ήταν can mean I was, you were, he was, she was, it was, we were, they were depending on context. Here, because the sentence is impersonal, English translates it as it was.
Why is there no separate word for it in the sentence?
Greek often does not use an explicit subject pronoun when it is not needed.
So English It was a strange coincidence becomes simply:
Ήταν μια περίεργη σύμπτωση.
Greek does this very naturally. The idea of it is understood from the situation, so adding a separate pronoun would usually be unnecessary.
What does μια mean, and why is it not ένα?