I am going on holidays in two days for two weeks, but before going I would like to see my friend: shall I say
It would be nice to see you before I leave.
It would be nice to see you before I left.
I think the second one is better, as it is not a real situation but a wish.
Answer
The OP believes that It would be nice to see you before I left expresses a wish and not a real situation, and this is why the past tense is better in the subordinate clause.
It is certainly true that wishes that a present situation were different are commonly expressed in the past tense:
I wish I had more money.
It is also true that the past tense is typically used in the subordinate clauses of similar (so-called) conditional 2 sentences to express an unreal (counterfactual) situation:
It would be nice if I had more money.
The past tense is also used in conditional 2 sentences to convey the speaker's belief in the remoteness of the possibility of something happening:
It would be nice if I finally won some money on the lottery.
Further, the past tense is common (but far from mandatory) in the subordinate clauses of reported statements:
She said that it would be nice to see you before you left.
But none of the above contexts fits the OP's example. The It would be nice to see you clause in this context does not mandate the past tense of the verb in the subordinate clause.
The leaving is prearranged, hence the present tense is used. There is nothing unreal or counterfactual or reported about the leaving. The present tense is the usual tense for scheduled events: cf. My plane leaves at 8.45 tomorrow evening. So, my clear preference in this context is for:
It would be nice to see you before I leave.
Two further points. Firstly, the main clause can be expanded to: It would be nice if I could see you .. , in which case the past tense (could) is used to express a wish, remote possibility or counterfactual. But this still has no influence of the tense in the before I leave clause.
Secondly, the past tense is often used to express deference or politeness. For example:
Excuse me, I wanted to see the manager. Is she free?
So, It would be nice to see you before I left is conceivable in the context of, for example, a student requesting an appointment with a professor.
Addendum
The list below shows the Google results for various "It would be [ nice / good / great ] to [verb] ... before I ... " constructions. They show that the present tense is much more usual in the before clauses of such constructions.
- It would be nice / good / great to see you before I leave [14]
- It would be nice / good / great to see you before I left [0]
- It would be nice / good / great to see you before I go [10]
- It would be nice / good / great to see you before I went [1]
- It would be nice / good / great to know before I leave [4]
- It would be nice / good / great to know before I left [1]
- It would be nice / good / great to know before I go [40]
- It would be nice / good / great to know before I went [0]
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