Years ago, when I considered C++ (and discarded it), it seemed that it was hard to write C++ without understanding most of the features. Let's not argue about T

Years ago, when I considered C++ (and discarded it), it seemed that it was hard to write C++ without understanding most of the features. Let's not argue about THAT. But is there now an accepted small subset that can stand alone as a first layer of study and usage? Giving a real understanding of that subset and being able to write in that subset? Any text describes this? This idea of layers in learning a language seems fundamental to me - (Perl 5 was - still is - amazing for that. Perl 6 / Raku is great but it lost that.)