I'm not saying that animals have advanced language on par with human language. We seem to be built for language in a way that animals are not - and yet under some circumstances notions are passed from human to animal. "Sit" causes the dog to sit.
I think it's less a question of me being overly impressed, and more one of you being under impressed. That an animal can recognise a colour and then give the associated word for that colour shows a rationale and understanding which is the basis of our own language. You may talk of advanced semantics, go into individual morphemes and phonetics, but that association is the heart and only true purpose of language. The transfer of ideas - even (or perhaps especially) abstract ones such as colour. So yes, most animals did not evolve with a mind to advanced language. But that association between word and meaning shows that it's not beyond the realm of possibility that animals may eventually develop better language skills. It's almost like saying rudimentary speech in a child is not real language - it is. It transfers ideas, albeit not in an advanced form.
Fortunately for us we have evolved for language. Presumably, and for obvious reasons, speech helped us survive. But it's highly based on age - there's a critical stage during which those advanced meanings must be learned or what we come out with is "give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." Semantically speaking, they can learn words. Syntax...not so much. Some morphology if you're lucky. And yet we don't call them animals.
Language should not be the barrier which defines human or animal - it's a trait which we, as a species, have developed. That does not mean that we're somehow the ultimate species, or that we're no longer a species on par with all other species.