serais vs sois

Question

Hi room and experts

Please explain why the selected être verb in this sentence is not written in the subjunctive 'Tu nous avais dit que tu n'y croyais pas, que tu serais satisfait avec la moyenne'. Why is it not rather 'n'y croyais pas que tu sois'?

Accepted Answer

I assume you you mean that croire should be followed by the subjunctive in negative sentences. But in this case there's no connection between croyais and serais, so there's no reason for the subjunctive. There's a comma after "tu n'y croyais pas", and after "you didn't believe it [would happen]" in the original English, so Thomas said two separate things. (Also the object of croyais is "y", so que has to be related to dit).