French language Q&A Forum

For some verbs like passer, monter etc there's a rule: 

When a verb is followed immediately by a noun (as opposed to a preposition), it uses avoir as the auxiliary, like most verbs.

But in the book « Les verbes et leurs prépositions » (by Jean-Michel Robert, Isabelle Chollet) there's a note for the verb convenir:

Le verbe convenir se conjugue avec l’auxiliaire avoir lorsqu’il a le sens de « plaire, être appro­prié à », avec l’auxiliaire être lorsqu’il signifie « décider ensemble ».

So I'm confused. What would be the right choice in the following case?

1. La date que vous m’aviez proposée ne m’a pas convenu.

2. La date que vous m’aviez proposée ne m’est pas convenue.

From the one side, here convenir means « plaire, être appro­prié à », therefore it shoud be conjugated with avoir.

From the other side, there's no COD here: "La date" is the subject and "me" is COI, so être should be used.

Looking back through the Quick Lesson and the accompanying discussion I still can’t tell the difference between “none arrived” and “no one arrived”. Aren’t they just two ways of saying the same thing? (Albeit, the second being my preference.)

I was wondering where we are supposed to place these constructions within sentences and clauses. Some translations show after the entire clause or sentence, some show after the verb.

- Nous les avons tous les deux vu(e)s

- Nous les avons vu(e)s tous les deux

- Lui et son frère sont venus tous les deux 

A general lesson about saying 'both' to describe people and objects should be made.

It seems the speaker is saying "l'impact de gigantesque."  I understand that a "de" here would be incorrect, but that is what I hear.  I presume this is because she is actually emphasizing the end of the word as in "l'impACT gigantesque."  Nevertheless, the emphasis on the end of the word seems over done.  

Later, it sounds as if she is saying "cette décision était facile."  I understand, too, that this would be incorrect grammatically, but nevertheless it is almost impossible for me to here clearly "ait été."  

Perhaps the lesson here is that one should not go by what one thinks one hears, but figure out what would be grammatically correct.  I guess that is probably what we do when listening to English.  We "sort of" listen but actually are just following the flow of the idea being transmitted and fill in the precise details only as needed.  

Could "du coin" substitute for "local" in the context of a local newspaper? 

Why is it "la plus parlée *au* monde"? The relevant lesson says to use "de": Forming the superlative of French adjectives in complex cases