Indeed. In a lot of practical cases with humans we have people who talk a good talk but are unable to put the ideas they verbalise into practice. We don't say "this person doesn't understand [the language]", we say "this person doesn't understand [the thing they are talking about]". It seems reasonable to say the Chinese room has a perfect grasp of Chinese, it just happens to be pretty stupid and probably not reliable.

It would be interesting to do a study of a group like judges or politicians and compare them to a hypothetical Chinese Room. It seems likely that they would often need to speak briefly on subjects outside their actual understanding, but they clearly have a deep understanding of the language.