I agree with Snopes. Pronunciation is everything in Spanish. The word nova is not at all pronounced the same as no va, and a native Spanish speaker would not confuse the two. My personal experience after having lived in Central America with locals, not ex-Pats, is that accent and pronunciation are the key to speaking Spanish, not grammar.

It's "Philosophically True": It's true to the extent people need it to be to make a point or prove their philosophy valid, like the idea of the "tabula rasa"; we know, scientifically, that humans aren't blank slates at birth, but some people have a need for it to be true so their philosophy isn't disproven by mere positivism.