> Not sure if it's an American pronunciation thing

It's a bad American pronunciation thing like "Febuwary" and "nuculer".

If you pronounce the syllables correctly, "an-ec-dote", "Feb-ru-ar-y", "nu-cle-ar" the spellings follow.

English has it's fair share of spelling stupidities, but if people don't even pronounce the words correctly there is no hope.