Ownership is something that is central in C++. Programmers who come from languages where they can rely on a garbage collector probably find it odd that they would have to specify how variables are captured. For a C++ programmer, it is natural to think about who owns something and in which scope it lives.

To generalize a bit: a lot of the things that might seem odd to non C++-programmers are perfectly natural to C++-programmers.

It's not often that I hear that C++ is too narrow. Being able to add new operators and changing the way the type checker works both seem like niche things and something that is more fit for a research language.