Which of these nations has the fewest number of border countries?

[yi-ing]

Which one is correct?

Which of these nations has the fewest number of border countries?

Which of these nations has the fewest numbers of border countries?

 

[emsr2d2]

Neither.

Which of these countries has the fewest countries bordering it?

 

[jutfrank]

With number, use high and low, (not few).

the lowest number of

 

[yi-ing]

I extracted the sentence from CNN transcript. :roll:

 

[Rover_KE]

Why didn't you tell us the context in post #1?

 

[yi-ing]

Because these days all of my posts are extracted from CNN. In previous posts I mentioned the source so I thought it wasn't requited here.:-|

 

[GoesStation]

Sentences like the thread title are not unusual in unscripted speech. People change their minds about where a sentence is going before they finish saying it, so they mix up different terms and collocations. In this case, the speaker may have begun to say the fewest bordering countries, then shifted in favor of the lowest number of bordering countries. Instead of either of those grammatically correct phrases, they ended up with a bit of a mess. Listeners will generally understand anyway.

 

[emsr2d2]

Because these days all of my posts are extracted from CNN. In previous posts I mentioned the source so I thought it wasn't required here.:-|

Notwithstanding any previous posts that give the source, you still need to quote your source in every post. There are two reasons for this:

1) It is important to credit the author of any words you quote.
2) We don't have superhuman memories. We help hundreds of users on this forum every day. We can't be expected to remember something like "yi-ing always quotes from CNN".

 

[Rover_KE]

Additionally:

3) We don't want students/learners new to the forum reading your questions for the first time to think 'Yi-ing hasn't bothered to quote source and context so it looks like I don't need to either'.

 

[Tdol]

Living in Laos, which is often described as a landlocked nation, I have seen that the government prefers the term land-linked, and we have borders with a number of nations here. I rather like the new term.