I agree, considering after thirty years of service, if not more, the Head of Communications/Operations of a starship and a Lt Commander, does not know the language of the Federation's greatest enemy? Yeah right. Or maybe it was an obscure Klingon dialect....like Latin.
It would have been much better if there was a scene of the enterprise sneaking into Klingon space trying to avoid their ships or something. It could have been a tension filled sequence instead of the buffoonery we did get.