What an animal lacks that keeps it from being able to say “bread” is an entire system (which apparently exists only in man) that makes it possible for a person to convert things – sensory stimuli, images, events – into concepts.
In contrast to animals, man has the singular ability to transform his intelligence into a framework of symbols that one can think about, to build them through letter combinations, and to transfer them from world to world – from intellect to feeling, and from one person to another.
This transformation from idea to symbol is rooted in a very lofty realm, higher than understanding and comprehension, somewhere in the mysteries of the divine speech, of the divine kingship.
These mysteries are the qualitative leap that defines this new being, existing nowhere else in creation, that of man, the speaking being.
Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz