I know absolutely nothing about Greek except for the alphabet and some English roots, but I am curious, is ‘[size=134]καλλιστι[/size]’ the dative superlative of the word for ‘fair’ (i.e. ‘to the fairest’)?
I’m afraid not, though very close. It’s an error propogated by Discordians. 
For the golden apples story it should be καλλίστῃ.
I see. That iota subscript doesn’t change the pronunciation at all, correct? So, kalliste, with the all pronounced like the English ‘all’, and a short ‘i’? But how would the eta be pronounced?
Is the formation of the superlative for kalos regular? Where do the extra lambda and the sigma come from?
[edit]I see the sigma is regular in ‘adjectives of the second form’. I also see that those adjectives usually have their stem modified in the comparative and superlative. Must one simply memorize these changes?[/edit]
Probably most like reality 500BC: like a drawn out ‘ehhh’ as in ‘set’. Most people don’t pronounce iota subscript, but if you’re feeling archaic, finish off the ‘ehhh’ with a iota sound (ee, ‘feel’) at the end to get the basic feel.
However, most people using Erasmian pronunciation (conventional for some time now) pronounce eta like ‘ay’ in ‘day’.
The iota is pronounced the same no matter where it is, so absolutely not like the short ‘i’ in ‘sit’. Think ‘seat’, just quickly. Native English speakers naturally shorten that to ‘sit’ here, so I imagine most English-speaking classics profs even pronounce it that way.
[edit]I see the sigma is regular in ‘adjectives of the second form’. I also see that those adjectives usually have their stem modified in the comparative and superlative. Must one simply memorize these changes?[/edit]
Yep. Most adjectives are regular, fortunately.
Thanks! I’m off to the PD forums to tell people.
The extra lambda could come from an influence of the noun to kallos “beauty”, but nobody knows why there is a second lambda in to kallos…
About eta changing into i, hence kallisti from kalliste with a fina eta : this is a phenomenon called iotacism, which happened earlier that I ever thought, namely already between fifth and third century B. C. (I thought it was only A.D. !! see - unfortunately in French - http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iotacisme) : ei, oi u psilon and eta became then i in the pronunciation, - but not in the writing.
So kallisti is the newer pronunciation of kalliste
Now χαῖρε, as I always say.