Re Laying down the gauntlet

However, let's stick to more interesting topics like "historical English orthography" and what it means for ESL. Any input from your side?

What has how we came to spell words in English and the amalgamation of different languages in to what we today call English got got to do with discussing either EFDL or the standard of ESL teaching... Or anything we have been discussing here? The most tenuous link would be when I corrected your dreadful grammar! (Sorry, descriptive grammar, all the cool kids use but in place of and these days!)

I agree it is interesting to study the origins of a language, but I disagree that it has any practical application on the day to day current teaching of English as a second language. Much the same as it's very interesting to know how the ancient Greeks came up with mathematical theory, but their development of it is not taught in maths lessons today, it's covered in history lessons. How things came to be as they are is of no practical applied use in a classroom full of students who are learning how to speak English now. It's an interesting academic subject that academics can study and discuss and publish papers and books about. For frontline ESL teaching it holds no practical application. No doubt you will attempt to claim it is the reason behind how language evolves, and it is, but that evolution does not excuse your inability to use the tenses correctly. In a few hundred years I am.sure the English language will have evolved in to another guise, but for now, for current ESL teaching there is no need to discuss the history of spelling!

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