Hot and Cold

Some say that differences in language are accounted for by differences in categorisation. I don't hold that view -- yet here is something interesting about categorisation. Shop tellers in South Africa generally use the same category for hot and cold. Call it category "temperature". They then assign the category "temperature" to various objects as their primary category. For instance, hot sausages and ice creams are both primarily "temperature" -- not hot or cold. Therefore they are placed together in the same bag. OBSERVATION: This cannot easily be undone. Firstly, it is a very widely held category. Secondly, how does one reprogram categories in shop tellers' minds? This seems impossible.