Why Red Means Red in Almost Every Language

The confounding consistency of color categories.

This hypothesis may help resolve the old debate that Kay and Berlin kindled. But it also raises new questions: Do the color categories we perceive as infants lay the groundwork for those we perceive as adults, thereby creating commonalities that get tweaked and refined by language? Or does language commandeer color categorization during our childhoods, imposing its own order on our perceptual worlds?