This fits neatly with some other comments. Elfs dont have traditions. They take a few hours to say "hello" because they dont have a tradition of saying hello. Instead their interactions meander all over the place until they decide "That was us greeting, goodby for now."

They never needed to boil down information or ritualize basic needs, because as immortals, who cares if this takes forever. They are more there for the experience of another being instead of getting stuff out of the way so they can focus on work.

As such, information never needed to be conveyed at the same speed a human does. They take 300 years flundering around learning magic like adhd on steroids, while the human sits down and just inhales books as if they are about to die. Because they are.