Many of the the spelling peculiarities, like aesthetic, paediatric, astronaut etc are not due to Latin but rather Greek derivation.
That is because diphthongs, a sound created by two letters, are commonplace in the Greek language. Other diphthongs are pronounced differently in Greek but the spelling is maintained even though it makes no real sense - eg astronaut, from the Greek: αστροναυτης (pronounced astronaftis), where astro = star and naut (ναυτης pronounced 'naftis') = sailor.
The diphthong "αυ" can be pronounced either "av" or "af" depending on the word, because Greek is vastly older, irregular and more complicated than either British or American English and that's even after great simplifications even from the 1980s onwards (don't get me started on 4 different accents on vowels I had to learn as kid, that followed no rules and had to be learned on a per-word basis, thankfully a thing of the past now)
British English coopted both Latin and Greek spellings but many of these spellings were simplified in American English. Another example is
oesophagus in British English, spelled
esophagus in American but pronounced pretty much the
same as the vastly older greek οισοφαγος (where the diphthong 'oi' has been changed to 'oe' in the English version and then just 'e' in American).
What is weirder is that the brits then applied the Greek logic to non-greek words, for example f
oetus - they used the same diphthong as
oesophagus, but this word doesn't exist in greek. I guess they just wanted to appear high-brow
For Greeks this is a source of amusement, as we can see the spelling derivations quite clearly
![Wink ;)](./images/smilies/icon_wink.gif)
Of course for non-greeks, it's all Greek to them...