Core vacation verbs: 放假 (school or work lets out for a holiday), 请假 (request leave), 休假 (be on leave), 度假 (spend a vacation, usually traveling). The big school breaks are 寒假、暑假、春假.
mistakes
Tone matters. 假 (fourth tone) = vacation. 假 (third tone) = fake. Saying 放假 with the wrong tone turns 'go on vacation' into something closer to 'release a fake' — context usually rescues you, but get the tone right.
Left-side person radical, side-form of 人. The vacation sense is conceptually 'a person borrowing time' — borrowed days away from work or school. The radical files 假 alongside other people-actions like 借 (borrow).
Right side carries the phonetic and the original verb 'to borrow' — pictured a hand reaching across to take something temporarily. The vacation reading 假 shifts to fourth tone but keeps the borrowed-time logic: a holiday is time you borrow from your normal duties.
