He was a prominent linguist

Leo Tolstoy had acquired a wide range of linguistic skills throughout his life, like many other aristocrats. He read Greek, Latin, Spanish, Italian, Ukrainian, Turkish, and Bulgarian, among other languages, in addition to English, French, and German with ease - one of the interesting facts about Leo Tolstoy. German and French were the first two foreign languages that Tolstoy studied with instructors. In the Russian Empire, learning these languages was fairly widespread.

He learned Tatar while getting ready for admission to Kazan University at the age of 15. Later, Leo Tolstoy pursued independent language study. He also read works written in the ancient language of Greek and studied it. His wife - Sofya Tolstaya recalled: "At the present moment, L. is sitting with a seminarian in the living room and taking his first Greek lesson. He suddenly had the idea to study Greek."

He had even developed his own technique of learning, so he had self-taught all of his linguistic abilities. He translated works and read books to broaden his vocabulary. Leo Tolstoy employed this approach to learn new languages, which is challenging to imitate in the modern era. His home library held 23,000 books in 39 different languages. Many of them have notes made by Leo Tolstoy, so, it is obvious that he actively used them.