I saw a fabulous exhibit once which was basically a rectangle of gradate colour. One end of the rainbow to the other from left to right, darkest of dark to palest of pale up and down. So far, not too exciting, but on top of this colour scale were drawn boundaries, which looked totally arbitrary to an English speaker, but actually mapped the colour range covered by specific words in another language. (I think the other language was something Polynesian, but my memory has gone...)
The fascinating part was staring at a polygon ranging from pale green to deep orange (or wahtever) and trying to 'see' the simliarity in these colours that made the Polynesians see them all as variations of the same thing.
Words really do affect how people see the world.